


With or Without you

by HyperKey



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Gen, slight AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-21
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-08-10 06:33:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 26,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7833985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HyperKey/pseuds/HyperKey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose suddenly goes missing and everything starts to crumble.  On Hiatus until further notice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've been meaning to write this for a long time, but my motivation was really depleted.  
> I've also gotten very self conscious about my lack of skill when it comes to plotting. 
> 
> Hope you still enjoy my writing anyway. Thank you for reading my stories, it means a lot to me.

Jack gazed at the clock mounted to the wall over the drawer he kept the movies in. Eleven PM. Yet another lonely night. If John hadn’t fallen asleep by now he would show up next to him in a few minutes, ask for a movie and hot chocolate, fall asleep in the first few minutes of the movie and leave his father to dwell on much more pressing matters

His eyes wandered to the coffee table spilling over with newspaper articles, unpaid bills and DVD cases. One more day and it would be three weeks. Three weeks without a single word of his wife. No call, not even a mail. Her car hadn’t been found yet. None of her belongings turned up anywhere. It was as if she had just disappeared without a single trace. But Jack knew very well that such cases always had a string of very dark and messed up conspiracies attached. He couldn’t help but wonder if someone got rid of her. People didn’t simply disappear without a single trace. Let alone an adult woman like Rose of all people.

Anger washed over him when he gripped the couch cushion, wanted to fire it across the room and yell, scream out all the rage he had built up. Just earlier he had gotten a call of the police department. They had given up on the search and started investigating neighbors. He was not to leave town as he was suspected to have something to do with it as well and further investigations had to be made.

“Fuck you.” He hissed at the cell phone lying on top of the case of a Disney movie.  The police suspecting him was likely the least of all the problems that just kept piling up. Child welfare wanted yet another word with him. Discussing ‘urgent matters’ as they called it. He glared at the letter next to an empty glass.

“All you want to do is find that one reason why I can’t raise a kid.” He hissed at the letter, then scoffed. “Dig deep enough and you might even find something.” With a shake of his head he sighed and buried his face in his hand for a moment.

John refused to go to school for almost a week now. He had never seen the boy put up such fights before. He screamed, kicked, cursed. The boy even spat into his face at some point. Jack had barely managed to keep himself from slapping his son and still hated himself for it. Even considering hitting the boy was enough to make him feel guilty for the rest of his days.  He was so easily riled up lately, even faster than usual and he never considered himself to be the most patient person. He knew he had a short fuse but never when it came to John.

Rose’s disappearance had taken a toll on him and John. The whole neighborhood was talking and he knew for a fact that most of them weren’t on his side. He suspected one particular couple to have given the child welfare people hints about the situation. They couldn’t find anything the first time they had been there. They wouldn’t find anything now. But that didn’t mean it didn’t make him nervous.  Being a cyborg was enough to make people suspicious and now everyone was even more wary of him.

John’s best friend stopped by once a day to drop off homework. Jack had no idea if John actually did it or not. The past few days he had spent on the phone, calling in favors of people he hadn’t talked to in years.  Some of them weren’t eager to hear from him and in cases like Meryl they were so surprised the hung up on him.

He hadn’t dared to call Meryl a second time, too ashamed of having to call her in the first place and too frightened to hear her response on what he wanted to ask her. Sunny had been eager to help in finding Rose, but even though she was the first person he had called after he was sure that something must’ve happened to his wife, the girl came up with nothing. She had babbled something about her and Wolf going through thousands of hours of security footage and being unable to locate her anywhere. Otacon seemed to help her with that, and Jack didn’t really want her to feel guilty for not finding any clues.

He turned back to the TV screen that kept looping the menu screen of _The godfather_ for at least an hour now. He didn’t particularly remember anything of the movie, his mind too occupied with worrying about John and Rose.

The boy didn’t take it lightly that his mother was not there. It didn’t only show in his behavior but also his actions and how unmotivated he seemed lately. Jack didn’t blame him, let him be. He wasn’t good at dealing with things like this. The boy’s teacher called a few days ago, asked how the boy was doing and Jack felt like he had to explain what was going on to her. She needed to know in order to act accordingly. John wasn’t skipping school because he had better things to do. The reasons were much more urgent and important.

The teacher seemed quite understanding and had even offered to research some material and addressed so John could get some help with his current situation. Jack wasn’t sure if any of this would be worth the effort, but refusing her seemed wrong. And yesterday said teacher had showed up with a small box filled with books and addresses, for them to use. John had hidden away from her, afraid to be scolded for missing school. The teacher went well about how she told him that she wasn’t happy about him skipping school, but also told him that she would make an exception and not mark it in his file if he went back to school at the start of next week. John still had four days left until then, but Jack had doubts that the boy would go.

When John hadn’t shown up in the living room at half past eleven Jack decided to head to bed. Who knew if he was able to actually get some sleep, but sitting in the living room all night and brooding over things he couldn’t change wouldn’t make his mood any better either. Somehow daily life had to go on. The house looked like a mess already. The kitchen desperately needed to be cleaned up, the laundry was piling up too and the floors collected dust. He added washing the car to the mental list he had just made and knew he wouldn’t follow it through anyway.

In the first few days he had thought he would get used to it, and that Rose would show up sooner or later with a good excuse, but with each passing day that hope was crushed a little more. By now he was just clinging to a tiny shred of hope and he really wished for some words of advice.

He was halfway up the stairs when he saw John walking towards him. The boy had his pillow clutched in his hands and didn’t say a word when he hugged his father. Jack didn’t bother questioning what he did there, he only picked him up and held him tightly. The cold tears that dripped into his shirt made him grimace in sympathy. John barely talked about what he thought lately, was very quiet and often lost in thoughts.

Nights like these happened every other night now and Jack feared that this had long term effects on the boy. He figured it would’ve been nice to make some happy memories even without Rose, but who knew if that was actually going to work at all. Maybe a surprise would cheer the boy up at least long enough to fall back asleep. He had planned to tell him in the morning, but now seemed a better time.

“Wanna hear some tiny good news?” He whispered when he made his way into the bed room. He didn’t bother to switch the lights on and just sat down on Rose’s side of the bed. John only nodded, his soft hair brushing against his father’s cheek

“I got a job.”

John pulled away for a moment, then hugged him again. “Really?” he asked silently, sounded defeated and very tired.

“Mhm.” The man smiled and cuddled him. The boy gripped his shirt, his hands like tiny claws as if something was trying to pull him away from his father. “Is it overseas?” he mumbled into the man’s shirt.

Jack sighed and grabbed the woolen blanket discarded on the bed just hours ago and wrapped it around the boy. “Nope.” He said silently. “Just a bit into town. And only on the weekend.”

John nodded once more, his hands unclenching the shirt and he pulled the blanket a bit higher up. “…That’s bad, right?”

“How is that bad?”

John grumbled. “It pays less.”

Jack was about to argue but closed his mouth. The boy was right. Sometimes he was amazed by how much the boy knew, but that probably came naturally with a mother like his. And again Jack was thinking about Rose.

“…but it’s also good.” John then continued. “You got a job even though people say horrible things.”

“Maybe I can get a second.”

John played with a corner of the pillow he was still holding. “Not overseas.” he insisted.

Jack wrapped his arms around the boy and shook his head. Only now he slowly began to realize how much the boy was suffering, nut just now but before that. He had only ever seen the happiness when he returned from work, never been around for long enough to see the underlying pain.  John must’ve been scared that he’d leave him alone too. Like he had done for years. Unintentional in the beginning, and then willingly for the sake of money. Maybe even to be _himself_. But was that really what mattered? Wasn’t his family more important than that?

“Not overseas.” He whispered as he held the boy tighter.

John had fallen asleep again at that point, left his father to dwell on his own guilt. He should have never assumed that his family was safe here, should have never been so trusting. Rose could stand her ground in most cases, but what if someone had physically attacked her? She was no fighter. What if she was lying in a ditch hoping for someone to find her.

The sensation of clenching insides was entirely artificial, but it felt so real it made him shiver. He had long since stopped wondering how this all worked and stopped caring. It was almost nice to feel things like that, even if the cause wasn’t pleasant at all.

_What if Rose had died?_

He bit his lip at that thought. The thought had been ghosting around in his mind for weeks, but he had forced it away before he could consciously think about it. Now it was there, hanging over him like a guillotine waiting to snap his neck. It took effort to force the thought back to where it came from and he knew it would resurface. His mind worked like that. Always teasing him when he least needed it, always on edge, always at the brink of insanity.

He had to keep it together for John’s sake.

Gently he put the boy to bed, didn’t bother to carry him into his own room. Sooner or later the boy would have crawled into his parent’s bed anyway.

When he pulled the blanket over the boy his gaze lingered on the sleeping figure of his son. The room was dark, but the streetlights illuminated a small portion of the carpet and the bed. Even while sleeping John didn’t seem relaxed at all, brows knitted together and a vice-like grip on the pillow clutched in his arms. Jack lowered his gaze to the ground, closed his eyes for a moment. He had to find Rose. In whatever state she was in, he had to find her. Everything else could come later. But where was he to start?

He had absolutely no clue. Rose had left work that evening, never to return home. It hadn’t taken him long to notice something was wrong. Rose was always punctually. If she had to work overtime she called, even when it was just ten minutes. Jack had waited two hours, then had called her. She had never picked up her phone.

At eleven in the evening he had been sure that something had happened to her and called the police. They told him to wait, to waste time. Rose could’ve been anywhere at that point, dead, kidnapped, lost. So he waited a day. When he called the police yet again, he was accused of being impatient and not giving his wife enough freedom.

That had sparked the thought of Rose leaving him because she wanted to, because she had enough of him. Jack knew that a similar thought had also crossed John’s mind when he had asked his father if he had done something to drive his mother away.

The third time he called them they finally believed him. Yet, when he actually went there they were hostile and distant. A cyborg murdering his wife seemed to be way more believable than a woman simply disappearing. He had to sit through hours of questions and soon enough they saw that he couldn’t prove that he hadn’t done anything to her. However, they also had no proof that he _had_ done something, so they let him go.

John had thrown a fit that evening, yelled at him for being late, screamed and told him he was the worst for making him think that he had left too. The boy had never noticed the note he had left on the dining table.

Jack sighed, opened his eyes again and stood. Sleep seemed like a bad idea now and so he returned to the lower floor and started to clean up the kitchen. The plates, cups and bowls were piling up, John had cleaned some dishes, but soon gave up on it and only cleaned what he needed to use.

It took him about two hours to clean the mess, then moved on to the living room but once there he just slumped down on the couch, motivation and energy fading. What good did it do? What did it matter if the living room was cleaned up or not?

Who cared?

Rose had never been bothered by small messes, left them wherever she went. It reminded him of less dark days before all the shit had even started. Small messes told him Rose was _there_. And even now with her nowhere to be found, he still felt like she was there. If he turned just in the right moment he might catch a glimpse of her.

He hung his shoulders, scoffed at himself and his ridiculous thoughts. He’d lose it if he’d dwell on this any longer and so he started to clean the living room as well. When he piled the DVD cases onto the drawer to sort them in the pile toppled over. Cases landed on the ground, some slipped under the drawer and in frustration Jack just sat down on the ground, not in the mood to gather them all again. Who needed this many DVD’s anyway?

He figured he could sell them once the money got too tight. He had barely been able to scrape the rent together for the month. Soon enough that would become impossible. John needed food too. He leaned against the drawer, hard wood pressing into his head. He barely even noticed the unpleasant sensation when he fished for the cases that had slipped under the drawer.

Instead of catching the cases, his fingers caught a sheet of paper. Assuming it was one of John’s drawings he carefully pulled it out, only to notice that it was a letter. It was addressed at Rose, but held nothing unusual. Also, it was months old. It had probably slipped under the piece of furniture and was forgotten there.

The letter seemed to relate to her work. He couldn’t make sense of all the technical terms and abbreviations.

Slowly he got up again and set the letter to the pile of letters for his wife in the hallway, all still waiting to be opened. He had considered looking, but what would it gain him? Most of them were from her workplace, some of her friends. It amazed him that people still bothered to write letters in the age of digital media.

In an attempt to find an actual clue about her whereabouts he went against his principles and opened the letters. He left the ones from her work alone and focused on the three letters that had hand written addresses.

But even after skimming them and reading them carefully line for line, he was no closer to a clue than he had been before. He was getting desperate. She had to be somewhere. People and cars didn’t just vanish!

Would this turn out to be one of these cases where they found the corpse twenty years later? He didn’t want to think about it. Rose was somewhere. And she was alive. She had to be. She just needed to be found and that was the problem.

The police couldn’t track down her phone and Jack didn’t have anything else he could’ve provided to give them a clue about her location. He growled angrily, swiped all the letters to the floor in a fit of rage. This frustration was growing with each passing day. It consumed most of his thoughts over the day.

Where could she be?  Why couldn’t anyone find her?

Still angered he picked up the letters and put them back to their place, then returned to the living room to finish what he started. It was then when his cell phone rang and he darted to the coffee table in a big leap, almost fell over the thing. The phone slipped off the table and landed on the ground. He needed two tries to grasp it and then finally was able to accept the call.

“Rose?!” he asked the caller in a fit of hope and desperation.

“Sunny.” The girl on the other end sighed.

Jack slumped down on the couch in disappointment. “Hey Sunny.” He didn’t bother to hide how heartbroken he felt.

“I found her car on a security cam, but the footage is two weeks old.”

“I don’t’ care! Where is it?!” He yelled into the phone.

“Jack-“

“Where?!” he repeated impatiently. His hands were shaking now, hope sparking up. Even if she wasn’t there anymore, someone might’ve seen where the car had gone.

“It’s about ten miles away from your house. I’ll give you the proper location by mail. The pictures are blurry and even enhancing them didn’t help much, but the license plate is definitely hers, Wolf confirmed that.” Sunny explained, sounding tired and defeated.

“Thank you.” Jack whispered, almost ashamed at how relieved he sounded now.

“Don’t do anything dumb.” Sunny told him. “Shouldn’t you be sleeping anyway? I was planning to leave a voicemail.”

“Doesn’t matter.” He just told her. “Thank you, Sunny.”

The girl was silent for a while before she eventually replied, “Hal said you shouldn’t blame yourself, and that you know what he means with that.”

“Yeah, I know.” He replied silently.

When he ended the call he wanted to get some rest, fired the phone onto the couch and buried himself into the cushions, exhaustion finally washing over him after two sleepless nights.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew this chapter riled me up... hahaha~  
> Hope you like it!
> 
> it might be a little fast paced.
> 
> EDIT 26.08.16: fixed minor spelling errors

Jack was shaken awake in the morning, big blue eyes staring at him as he blinked against the light in confusion. He had no idea how long he had slept, or whatever time it was. John was fully dressed in rain boots and a jacket, droplets of rain all over his clothing. He briefly thought about the carpet getting stains, then noticed the boy had his schoolbag on.

“I’m going.” John told his father.

“To school?” Jack asked in confusion. He hadn’t expected the boy to ever go back there willingly.

John nodded once. “We’re out of cereal. But I packed my own lunchbox.”

A smile spread over the cyborg’s face. This small moment of normalcy seemed so precious, he wanted to keep it forever.

“You packed enough so you won’t get hungry?”

The boy nodded again. “I also emptied the mailbox. You should do that more often, it was spilling over!”

“Will do.” The older man muttered and sat up. John looked a lot better today, but Jack knew that wouldn’t last.

“And I made coffee. You’re not a morning person, I thought that would help.”

Jack put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “You don’t have to push yourself.”

The boy’s fake smile fell and he let his head drop onto his father’s shoulder as his arms wrapped around the man’s neck. Jack gently rubbed his back and kissed his hair with a deep sigh.

“…I thought when I go to school again, you’d have time for other things.” The boy mumbled into his father’s shirt. “…I saw the bills.”

“John…”

“I don’t know much about money… but I’ve never even seen so much at once.”

Jack sighed once more and cuddled him tightly. “I know it looks like a lot. It _is_ a lot. But we’ll manage, I promise.”

“…if we move into an apartment, or if I sell some toys… I still have money in my piggy bank-“

Jack shook his head. “We still have enough for a while. We’ll manage. We always did.”

John pulled away, eyes cast to the floor. “Okay. He mumbled silently and lifted his head again, then took a deep breath. “I’ll pick up Tyler, I gotta go now.”

Jack watched the boy leave, waved after him when he dashed down the road into the direction of Tyler’s house. When the boy was out of sight he took a quick shower, dressed grabbed his keys and headed down to the police station once again. He was tired of showing up at that place every other day, fed up with filling out forms and waiting hours before they told him they couldn’t do anything and sent him home.

Rose had once told him how to save bad days but he couldn’t remember it at all. The moment she crossed his mind, he was focused on her alone, almost missed the station and came to a rather abrupt halt before he pulled into the parking lot. He felt like everyone who saw him sighed mentally. The woman at the front desk sighed physically when she saw him walk in.

“We’ve already done everything-“ she tried to quickly get rid of him.

“No.” he hissed at her. “You stopped looking for her.”

The woman seemed to have a hard time not to grumble in annoyance. “Look, I know you don’t like this, but I can’t do anything about it. You can fill out another form-“ She handed him a paper. “See if they change their mind.”

He scoffed. “Like hell they will. Fine. I’ll go look for her myself.” He hissed. Not that he hadn’t looked for Rose. Every time John had left for school he jumped into the car and drove down every road Rose could have taken. He made sure to be back before John came home and he had never found anything that could have been a clue.

“You cannot leave town.”

“Because it’s so much more convenient to accuse me of doing something to her, than to believe me. You people are so distrustful when it comes to cyborgs, I’m not even surprised anymore.”

“Mister-“

Jack growled and bit back an insult. He wanted to yell at her, thrash the whole place, but that would only cause even more trouble.

“You should leave.”

He clenched his fists and stormed out of the building, kicked his car in frustration that went into full blown alarm because he didn’t unlock it. In seconds two officers stormed out of the building, both glaring at him.

“Get away from the car!” one of them yelled. Both were male, seemed rather young.

Jack closed his eyes and took a step away from the car. “It’s my car…” he tried and held up the keys. This was so much more trouble than he needed. Why were they always so jumpy around cyborgs? Of course there was a lot of bad stuff going on, but he hadn’t ever acted like that around here. Why couldn’t they leave him alone just for once? He was so tired of it, so annoyed and frustrated of constantly being accused and blamed.

“Can you prove that?” one of the men asked.

Jack growled silently, pressed a button on the keys and unlocked the car. He then opened the glove compartment and took out the papers for the car. “There.”

The two men looked at the papers for way longer than they needed, but seemed convinced and finally let him go.

When Jack got into the car he put the location Sunny had sent him into the GPS and followed the route. It took him into a direction he hadn’t considered before. Forests were all around the roads, no buildings to be seen. He wasn’t quite sure where he was going but the way seemed right.

Twenty minutes later he had arrived. There was a tiny gas station, likely where the security camera had taken the picture. No houses in sight, not even a store anywhere. There was only this gas station in the middle of nowhere. Confused he pulled up on it, got out of the car and walked inside. There was a teenager at the register, looking rather bored. He barely even looked up at the customer and kept flipping pages in a magazine.

“If you got lost, there are maps.” The teen pointed to a wall. Jack didn’t bother to look.

“I’m not lost. I just want to ask something.”

The teen shut the magazine and put it away, suddenly looked a lot less bored. “And what would that be?”

Jack walked up to him and took out his wallet. He pulled the tiny picture of Rose out he always kept in there. It was a little crumpled at the edges but the picture was mostly intact. “I am looking for this woman. Seems like she stopped here a while ago.”

The teen squinted at the picture, then shrugged. “No idea, never seen her.”

Jack sighed and pointed out the window to his car. “See the car out there? She drives the same, just in silver.”

The teen turned to the window, dark eyes widening. “I would have noticed a car like that around here. Fancy cars like this stick out, you know?”

Jack nodded slowly, disappointment so painful it made his eyes sting with tears. He blinked them away and asked for a pen and a piece of paper. “You’re not the only one working here, right?”

“Of course not.”

“Good.” Jack muttered and scribbled down his cell phone number. He knew it was foolish, but he was desperate and there was no other clue to be found.

“Go ask your coworkers about this. Give me a call if anyone has seen this car.”

“O-okay.” The teen seemed overwhelmed but neatly folded the paper and sheepishly waved when Jack left the store and got back into the car.

He slammed the hands onto the steering wheel. “God damn it!” he yelled, pulled the door shut with way more force than necessary and started the engine. He waited a few more seconds, looked around. It was no use hunting after every little clue, but he knew he would do it anyway.

It was still early in the morning and so he decided to drive down further into the woods. He considered looking for her in the forest, but was fighting with himself at it. Would she be there? It was more likely he’d find an animal than someone that had been here two weeks ago.  Two minutes after he had thought that he stopped the car and got out. The forest stretched out on both sides of the road, yet the left side seemed to be thicker. He went for the other side for now. He was pretty sure he wouldn’t find anything he could use and he couldn’t spend too much time here anyway. He still needed to get groceries and be home before John returned, otherwise the boy would yell at him again.

The ground was muddy and slippery, broken branches all around and blocking paths into the forest. There was no way a human being would have gotten there without leaving traces and if there had been some before, they were long gone.  Some scratches on the trees looked fresh, only a few days old.

“Where are you, Rose…” he muttered to himself as he turned around and looked at the other side of the forest.

He knew it had been pointless, knew too much about how to find something or someone in an environment like this. If Rose had been here at some point, her traces were gone by now. Frustrated he turned back to his car.  He wanted someone to blame, but Sunny had done everything she could and he himself knew that it took quite some time to find something in security footage. He still decided to give the girl a call, just to inform her about what he had found out.

The girl picked up when he had just opened the door and sat down on the driver’s seat.

“Hey!” Sunny greeted him happily. “I was just about to call you.”

He straightened up, hopeful yet again. “Did you find out anything?”

The girl sighed at his hopeful voice. “Yes and no.”

“Come on, Sunny-“

He heard something clatter in the background and glasses clink together, “I found something that could be a clue, but it’s really vague-“

“What is it?” Jack asked impatiently, voice harsh and tense.

“Wolf found an image in the footage. There’s a woman from behind- But she could be-“

Jack sighed, his hope vanishing. He wondered if he would ever stop having hopes. He couldn’t quite get rid of this feeling.

“I’ll send it to you. It was in a mall around your area on the day she disappeared-“

Jack frowned, waited for the picture to arrive. When he opened it he held his breath. It had to be her. She was walking in a crowd, a bag with a clothing store brand printed on it. Rose had said something about needing a new blazer for work. Had she decided to get it on that day? Had she paid with cash? He made a mental note to look at the bank account when he got home.

“Jack?” Sunny asked, “Are you listening?”

“What-“

Sunny sighed in annoyance. “I said that if you think it’s her I can try to find her there. Hal said he started running a face search, but it’ll take a few days because there’s just so much footage to look through.”

“Pretty sure it’s her.” He muttered. “This is the only store she buys clothing at when it’s for work.” He started the engine, placed the phone aside on speaker mode and turned the car around. The workers at the store might have noticed her.

“I know it’s not much I can give you, but I hope it helps a bit… I want to find her to.” Sunny muttered, her voice sad and silent.

“You’re doing a lot.” He tried. Sunny had certainly found out more than the police had, but that was probably because Sunny had a personal connection to Rose.

“I just feel so sorry…” she sighed. “You always get in trouble and when things finally calm down, shit like this happens.”

He almost scoffed. “Chance are I’ll get in trouble anyway. I _will_ find her, one way or another.”

He could hear that Sunny wasn’t too pleased with what he was implying, but she didn’t say anything. “How did you find me, back then?”

He was about to argue, about to tell her that now wasn’t the time, but he found it relaxing to talk to someone that wasn’t too involved. He knew he had told her the story before, probably had left out some vital details but he didn’t mind getting into detail this time. Sunny was old enough now. He told her about how he worked for Big Mama for a while and how he eventually got to her.

Sunny was silent, sighed when he had stopped talking. “I wish Rose would have some sort of way to track her down.” She muttered. “That would make it so much easier…”

Jack nodded to himself, pulled up to the mall. The time he needed to drive there seemed so much less now that he had someone to talk to. He gazed at the clock on the dashboard and noticed that he had to hurry up a bit if he wanted to get groceries before John got home.

“You should take a break, Sunny.” He told the girl when he got out of the car.

“Are you kidding me?” Sunny shot back. “Wolf does most of the work, really.”

“Tell Wolf to take a break then.”

“And then what? Wolf was so bored he was on standby most of the time, he’s happy he as something to do for once.”

“Wolf actually gets bored?”

Sunny chuckled. “All the time. He even asked for a box of crayons.”

Jack locked his car at the parking lot and headed into the mall. He knew where the store he was headed to was located at and quickly made his way through the crowds. He barely even cared about their curious and distant stares.

“Crayons?”

“Yup! I already had to buy two more boxes. He breaks them all the time, but seems like he has fun with them.”

“That’s nice.” He muttered. “Listen Sunny, I gotta get some house work done, so-“ he sighed, not sure why he even lied. But Sunny didn’t seem bothered at it at all.

When he put the phone back into his pocket and walked into the store he felt like suddenly everyone went quiet. Workers kept staring at him warily and costumers quickly made way. He wasn’t supposed to be there, he assumed.

“Mister, I believe you are looking for a different store.” A brave older man told him.

Jack closed his eyes for a second and took a deep breath. “I am looking for my wife.” He told the man, pulled out the picture again. “She’s shopping here every once in a while.” He wanted to slap himself for not noticing this sooner. This should have been the first place to look for her! If he had been here sooner, someone could have pointed him in the right direction! But now it was probably too late.

Even though, he showed the man her picture and he adjusted his glasses and hummed silently. “I remember her. She was here a few weeks ago but I haven’t seen her today.”

“Was someone with her when you saw her last?” Again hope was soaring through him like a storm, ready to devour all the doubt he was feeling. If someone had seen her, he could find her.

“It seemed that she was here with a friend.”

A friend. Jack went through a mental list of all friends he knew Rose had. Three came to mind, all three women with families of their own. The all lived in town, Rose sometimes walked the dog of one of them.

“Thank you.” Jack hastily told the man and stormed back out of the store and the mall. It would be easy to call either of them once he got back home. Rose had their numbers in that little address book next to the telephone in the hallway. They had to be in there.

On the way home he stopped by a supermarket and got food for John, was almost in a good mood when he got home half an hour before John would show up and started making lunch for the boy while he flipped through the address book. One of her friends had been with her on that day.

And surely, the second person he called had been with Rose on that day. But even though she had been, she could only tell him that Rose wanted to go home after they parted ways.

When he set the phone down he almost knocked down the cups set next to the sink to dry. He was tired, annoyed. Frustrated and angry. He would find her. But when? After he had finished lunch and turned the stove off he se the table, wanted to surprise John with a decent meal for once. The boy had been eating nothing but processed things in the past few days because he couldn’t be bothered to cook.

Yet, when he looked at the clock he held his breath. It was almost four pm.

John should have been home an hour ago.

His heart raced now, fear spreading through him. He grabbed the phone, knocked down the cups this time but didn’t bat an eyelash when they shattered on the ground. Hastily dialed the number of John’s teacher.

“Winter-“ She greeted him.

“This is John’s father,” he managed, almost stumbled over the words. He had a hard time to collect his thoughts.

“Oh, hello!” she happily said. “Did John decide to go back to school by now?”

“What?” Jack hissed now. “He went today!”

Silence on the other end. “I didn’t see him in class.”

Jack cursed loudly, panic now gripping him. John had never shown up at school.

“Was Tyler there?!” He barked into the phone, his hands were shaking so violently he had to grip the phone tightly so it wouldn’t slip.

“Tyler was there.”

Jack hung up on her, grabbed his keys and dashed out the front door and across the street, all the way over to where John’s best friend was living. He frantically knocked at their front door, seemed out of breath when Tyler eventually opened up.

“Yo!” the boy grinned, but it faded quickly. “Did something happen?”

“Did John pick you up this morning?” Jack asked quickly, he didn’t want to waste any more time.

Tyler shook his head. “I was planning to bring his homework over in a bit.”

Jack spun around, barely thinking when he rushed back home. He had no idea what do to, mind running wild, thoughts blurred together. He almost ran into a car when he crossed the street, got yelled at but he barely even noticed.

When the house came back in sight, he also saw a blonde boy with a dark backpack walking up to it. Jack was next to the boy in an instant and gripped his arm.

“What the hell where you thinking?!” he shouted at the boy who shrank back in surprise and fear. “Where were you?!” he yelled, pulled the boy up into the house and slammed the front door shut, all while still holding on to the boy who was now crying and looked rather frightened.

Seconds passed in silence and Jack let go of him, his mind finally catching up with his actions. Feeling guilty and terrible for yelling at the boy like that he sank down to his knees and only pulled the boy into a tight hug.

John was sobbing into his shirt now, unable to get a word out.

“I’m sorry…” Jack whispered, finally calming down again. He had been so afraid that something had happened to the boy as well.

“Where were you?” he asked silently now.

John stayed silent for a while longer still fighting against sobs and tears.

“…I… I was looking for m-mom…”

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

Jack stared at his son, shocked and surprised both at what the boy had been doing and his own actions. He had never meant to scare John like this. Of course there had been little moments where John had been frightened of certain things concerning his father, but he had always taken the time to explain. This time he wasn’t sure what he should say. Apologies were sweet, but that was everything they were. They wouldn’t take away the fear the boy had undoubtedly felt just moments ago.  It was still in his eyes, just not as strong. He was almost proud that the boy took it upon himself to find his mother, yet also very concerned and still angry.

“You’ve scared me.” He admitted finally. “Never run off like this again, understood?”

John bit his trembling lip and suppressed more tears when he nodded shakily.

Jack knew he couldn’t let this go so easily. John had been terrified and whatever he would do now would probably stay in the boy’s mind for a while longer. This wasn’t a simple argument. They had had tons of those and none of them had ended up like this. Jack hated himself for snapping at the boy like this, for letting this part of his personality slip through in front of the boy. When he noticed John was gripping his arm where he had grabbed him Jack felt a sting. He hadn’t actually hurt him, right?

Slowly he reached out, winced when John pulled away, eyes wide and frightened again. The boy pressed himself into the wall behind him to be as far away from his father as possible in the cramped hallway. The boy’s face was full of scratches, he now noticed. Had he been running around in the woods?

Jack let his hand sink. “I…” he began slowly, the words escaping him. How was he supposed to fix this? John wouldn’t just forget about it like that one time where he had accidentally hit the boy in the face with a plate. This hadn’t been an accident. “Show me.” He ordered then, tried hard to keep his voice gentle and soft. The slight shaking was audible to himself, no surprise if John had picked up on it.

John slowly shook his head, and tried to back away even more. Jack made no move to get closer, just sat there, his back pressing into the other side of the hallway. There was barely half a meter space between them, yet to Jack it felt like a border he couldn’t cross until John did it himself. He deserved to feel bad. He had hurt the boy. Rose would’ve killed him for it.

Then again, if Rose had been there, this wouldn’t have happened.

“Does it hurt?” Jack tried. It wouldn’t have been a big deal to snap bones with his grip, he was well aware of that. But he couldn’t have done that. He would have noticed.

Fresh tears rolled over the boy’s cheeks when he nodded, still gripping the spot on his arm his father had grabbed.

“I wasn’t…. thinking.” Jack muttered. “You weren’t there in time and I got worried. That’s no excuse for jumping at you like that or for yelling and dragging you inside, I know.”

They boy stared at the floor now, still fighting tears.

“I was afraid that you had disappeared too…” Jack tried to explain. He wasn’t great when it came to explain his actions, but John needed to hear this. He couldn’t bear the thought of John being afraid of him.

John took a step forward and almost stumbled into his father, who carefully hugged him again and stroked his hair. “I’m sorry.” He whispered once more.

“I…I’m s-sorry too…” the boy cried. “I-I couldn’t find m-mom… I thought you would be happy when I find her… b-but sh…she was nowhere!” his words got drowned in a sob as his father picked him up and walked into the living room.

“I want to find her too.” He told his son, sat down on the couch and helped the boy take off the schoolbag.

John looked at him, still crying. Jack hated to see the boy cry, especially now that he was mostly at fault for it.

“What if she’s hurt?” The boy asked. “Maybe she got lost somewhere… and and…”

Jack then realized that it had been wrong to keep what he had found out to himself. Even though it wasn’t much, he still should have shared the information with John. The boy had his own thoughts and theories about the disappearance of his mother and Jack knew his son had a wild imagination.

“I’ve been looking for her.” He admitted.

“You did?” John asked in very short lived surprise, “But you didn’t find her either.”

Jack sighed. “She is somewhere. We just have to look at the right place.”

John nodded, slowly climbed off his father’s lap and headed into the kitchen. He came back with two plates and settled down on the couch. He had discarded his sweatshirt along the way and was not running around with a t-shirt. Jack winced when he saw the bruise forming on the boy’s arm.

“You actually made decent food.” The boy commented with a small smile. It could have been a smirk.

Jack nodded slightly, eyes still focused on the boy’s arm. That bruise would be there for a while. “Can’t let you eat junk food all the time…” John was pretending again. He wasn’t alright at all, but he hid his own feelings for reasons unknown to Jack. It made him grimace in annoyance.

“I’m sorry I lied… and that I didn’t tell you were I was.” John apologized silently. He stared at the plate and didn’t dare to look his father in the eye. “You wouldn’t have let me go if I told you, though.” his voice was silent, almost a mumble.

Jack opened his mouth, but closed it again. John was right. He wouldn’t have let him go. “I was at the police station today, and at a gas station and at a store where she shops at sometimes…” He muttered, not quite sure what he was going at.

“People don’t just vanish.” John whispered. “That only happens in movies.”

“True.” Jack didn’t want to ruin that illusion. He couldn’t think of anything Rose could have done that made anyone want to silence her. If anything, they’d be going after him. Not her.

Silence settled over them, John eating his food while Jack just stared out of the window, his mind dwelling on theories and random thoughts that came and went. He barely noticed that John had left the living room when the doorbell rang.

“I’ll get it.” He heard the boy mumble from the hallway.

He sat there for another second, then dashed into the hallway as fear spread through him. Someone at the door at this time couldn’t mean anything good. He seemed to have been right when he saw a man and a woman standing in front of the door. Instinctively Jack wrapped an arm around the boy and pulled him backwards, stared at the two strangers in confusion and surprise when he noticed the police car in front of the door.

He held his breath. What were they going to do now?

“Wha-“ His voice gave out; the systems were already overwhelmed with the onslaught of emotions just minutes ago. Now the police. What could that mean? He swallowed hard. Had they actually found her?

John was clinging to his leg now, most likely with similar thoughts going through his head.

“Did… did something happen?” Jack was still shaking. Carefully he placed a hand on John’s hair in hopes of calming the boy.

“We have been informed of an incident, that most likely involved child abuse.” The man of the two muttered. His face was stern and he looked rather unimpressed as he flashed his badge at him.

Jack stared at the man in shock, he resisted the urge to slam the door shut, grab his boy and just run. That would only make it worse. He assumed one of the neighbors had seen the situation outside earlier and called the police in fear for John’s safety.

He felt the boy’s grip tighten around his leg. 

Nervously he ran a hand through his hair, the words escaped him. His mind was going blank again as fear and panic mixed with the guilt he still felt for his actions. The systems sent out a warning, informing him of what he already knew. The stress he felt was affecting them now. He needed to calm down soon or the body would force a shutdown to protect the systems.

“Can we talk to the boy for a moment?” The woman now asked.

John instantly shook his head and hid behind his father, the woman crouched down and put on a fake smile. “Just for a moment.”

“No.” John grumbled back. “We just argued.”

“Apparently a cyborg attacked a child.” The man told Jack then. “Does this child belong to you?”

Jack clenched his fists and held his breath for a moment. “Yes.” He forced out, had a hard time to keep his voice level.

“You’ve been investigated before, is that correct?”

“They never found anything.” Jack hissed now.

The man crossed his arms. “That doesn’t mean there is nothing.”

“We argued. We yelled at each other. That happens in every family.”

“Aren’t you the main suspect for that missing woman?”

Jack flinched. Another blow. He knew the man tried to rile him up and he was so close to snap, but if he did now he’d have a lawsuit coming and they would take John. He had no idea what to say anymore. Any word would be used against him; he knew how these people were like.

When the woman of the two reached out to John, the boy backed away and hit his arm at the drawer. He winced and grabbed the spot and Jack felt as if the ground had just opened up below him and tried to swallow him whole. That awful sensation of having lost, the hopelessness of having done everything and still fail. Of course the woman got curious about the bruise. Even an idiot could tell it was new.

John explained what had happened in that argument, he tried to convince the two that none of this was done on purpose, that it all had been an accident, but they wouldn’t listen.

To Jack it all seemed to happen in another world, unreal. Like a movie he was watching. He knew what was going on and when the woman sent John up to pack a bag with a few clothes, he could only shake his head at the sheer ridiculousness of it all. They couldn’t take John away!

“Y-you can’t-“ he tried, the words a choked whisper, panic now seeping through.

He was handed a business card when John slowly headed downstairs again. The boy was crying again, gripped his father’s sleeve and shook his head when the woman tried to take the bag.

“You can’t stay here.” She tried. “We will take care of this; you don’t have to worry about anything.”

John clutched the sleeve tighter. Jack knew that if he made a move they would take the boy for sure. Now he might still had a chance to convince them that they were in the wrong.

“A-and… if… if I call-“ Jack tried, stumbled over the words. “A friend… a friend would take him for a few days… Just…”

The man of the two scoffed but the woman seemed to consider it. “This friend can pick him up. You have the address.” She stated drily and pointed to the business card Jack was holding in violently shaking hands. There was no doubt that they were seeing that. Yet, normal humans with little to no experience with cyborgs had no sympathy. Some people even believed that cyborgs were just robots disguised as people. He had heard everything over the years.

Jack heard John scream and yell, but he couldn’t move. His body felt wrong, as unreal as it was. Frozen and cold. He saw John kick and scratch the two that wrestled him into the car, but he only managed to take a step before the car drove off into the night and left him standing there in the hallway, the front door open with a sensation that felt as if all his insides had been ripped out. He could barely breathe when he sank to his knees, vision blurred by tears and mocked by the business card that had fallen down in front of him

At a time like this he couldn’t do anything. That one time his son really needed him to do something he didn’t do anything.

He couldn’t feel the door under his hand when he tried to close it. The sensation so numbed out that he slammed it shut on accident. The systems were sending out more warnings now, and he barely managed to make it back into the living room to get his cell phone. The numbness in his fingers made it almost impossible to navigate around the phone and his visions was growing black now. Breathing was still so hard that it made all of this even worse.

He couldn’t call Sunny in this state. She would be scarred for life. The phone dropped to the floor when he tried to pick it up after he had dialed the number of another person, managed to press the speaker button and waited, while trying to calm down.

“…You know what time it is?” A woman hissed at him.

“Me-Meryl-“ His voice hitched. He was so overwhelmed by his own panicked thoughts that he could barely get together what he wanted to tell her.

“Holy shit, what’s wrong with you?” She asked in surprise, concern clear in her voice.

“John… was taken-“ he forced himself to take a deep breath, but it wouldn’t quite work. “By the police… t-they… you… you need to- Pick him up- Please…!”

 The short silence on the other end almost pushed his mind over the edge then. It wouldn’t take much more.

“Whoa… Wait.” She sounded surprised. “Why would they take John?”

He almost whined in frustration, but heard Johnny in the background explain something. They argued for a moment, then Meryl was back at the phone. “You need to calm down.”

“I can’t.” He hissed back at her, exhaustion creeping over him.  “Please… I’ll pay for the plane…” He leaned against the couch, closed his eyes, finally able to breathe more calmly again. “I can’t let them keep him…”

Meryl sighed, her voice taking on a softer tone when she replied now, “You focus on calming down, then you’ll explain it in full detail. The fact that you called me of all people, tells me that this is serious, but this is the most random timing ever.”

“They think I’ve done something to Rose.” Jack hissed, eyes still pressed shut. “John and I argued… I snapped at him. I guess some neighbor saw that and got the wrong idea.“

“Okay, I get it now.” Meryl muttered. “I’ll take the boy for a few days. And forget the plane tickets; you know my father has more than enough to pay for plane tickets.”

“Thank you…”

“What about you? Will you be okay?” She asked, concern clear in her voice. “You scared me there for a second.”

“You know how this is.” He only muttered, knew he had said what he needed to say, but even though he was calming down, he didn’t want to end the call. Didn’t want to accept that the house was silent.

“What are you going to do now?”

He didn’t need to think. “Get John back and find Rose.”

“Any idea where she could be?”

“Not anymore.”

Meryl talked to someone else for a moment, probably Johnny. “You could have asked for help sooner.” She sighed.

“You hung up on me.” He fired back.

“Oh…” He could almost see her slamming her palm into her face. “That… Why didn’t you call back?”

“Why should I have?” He shrugged into the beginning darkness. “Besides, what would you do?”

“Oh please…” Meryl grumbled in annoyance. “One word of my father and they’d deploy search parties anywhere you want.”

He sighed and opened his eyes, picked up the phone and headed into the hallway to pick up the business card. He told Meryl about all the locations he had been to already, and gave her the number written on the card. Eventually she ended the call, and he was left to dwell on the emptiness of the house.

He could have fought them, should have. Rose would-

He stopped his thoughts. Another thing that would have never happened if Rose had been there. What was he supposed to do now? Where could he look for her? And how would he get John back? He couldn’t just break in there and take the boy. That would only make it worse.

 

 

 

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

She glared into the beginning darkness, so used to being stuck in this cramped place and tied to a heater that she barely even questioned it anymore. The house seemed old and run down, wallpaper stained with mold at places, coming off at others. Paint chipped. The furniture was quite worn out too. That couch she could see had the filling spill out and that one window was overgrown with ivy, some daring leafs even peeked through the window frame.

 Once a day a man came in to give her food. The first few days she had spat it into his face, then she had to give in. It was food and refusing it would only get her slapped in the face again. He was older, mid fifties she assumed, chubby, almost bald. Apparently no children or other family. She had tried to reason with him, but no matter what techniques she used, he knew her game. She still didn’t know why she was here and chances were that he had no idea either. He knew she would talk if he let her go, that was most likely the reason why he still kept her here. Maybe too soft to actually get rid of her, but evil enough to keep her confined.

He had only wanted to take her purse. Now she thought she should have let him run off with it. Her cell phone had rung a few times, no doubt that was Jack. But now the battery had long died and she was most likely in the middle of nowhere. She never heard cars even though the window in the kitchen was always open slightly. If only she hadn’t chased the man. He had pulled a gun out and threatened her. It was her fault for having to stop at a gas station because the damn soda really wanted out again. She was just on the way to get back to her car when the man had jumped at her, snatched her purse and ran off.  Things were a blur after that. The man hit her badly and then she woke up here.

He treated her like a priced possession most of the time. If she behaved. If she didn’t he hit her. Her face was probably still full of bruises. It didn’t matter. She was waiting. Every day she had worked on memorizing his pattern. When he would tie her lose so she could use the bathroom, when he would get her food. When his greasy hands brushed through her hair and his fingers ghosted over her shoulders. She endured it. He never went further than that. Maybe she was grateful that he didn’t touch her in other places.

He had to try harder to scare her. She respected his strength and his guns, but she wasn’t afraid.  She had witnessed far scarier things. The neighbors at home were probably talking by now and when she showed up again, they’d all be sorry. She felt disgusted just thinking about it, didn’t want to imagine what her husband and her son were going through.

News had blabbed something about a kid being taken away from his father earlier and Rose had been wondering since then. How were things at home? There was no doubt Jack tried to find her. Yet, where would he look and who would even help? She had had enough clients with missing relatives to know that finding them again after a certain period of time was most likely impossible. He had to be devastated. She knew she would get out of here eventually, one way or another, but who knew when that would be?

The creaking of the door made her roll her eyes. The guy was walking in now, most likely for a bathroom break for her. She had never learned his name, but she hadn’t shared anything with him either. If he had looked through her purse he’d know enough. The two hundred bucks she had gotten just before the man had tried to rob her were probably long gone too. The new blazer for work ruined as he had used it as a rag when he had spilled beer onto the carpet. That had her pull at the piece of cloth that tied her to the spot. Her wrists were sore, marks visible on them. 

He had her wallet, driver’s license, ID, credit cards. Everything. Even her keys with the keychain John had made for her. And her car. She scolded herself for even spending thoughts on objects. The most important thing was that she was alright. She had to get back home one way or another and with her body intact. She had briefly fantasized about jumping into her car and driving off, but without the keys that was useless. She had no idea how to steal a car, had wondered if Jack knew. But she couldn’t ask him either so she shoved the thought away.

Her captor smelled of alcohol and sweat, the stench making her sick when he crouched down to untie her. She had planned this for the past few days and was now sure it would work. She had no idea of the layout of the building, but there was this open window she could always see from where she was sitting. She had to make it count now, who knew if the window would be open later and if she had enough strength for another attempt if it failed this time.

He dragged her through the short hallway to the cramped bathroom she had used so often she started to see patterns in the tiles. The wallpaper was peeling at places in the hallway and the whole building reeked of mold and dust.

She took her time today. Looked at herself in the mirror, did what she was expected to do. Used more water than usual to make herself somewhat presentable. She really wanted to take a shower too.  Her face was bruised, hair greasy and messy. She briefly wondered if she was able to fix this or if she had to cut it off. With a sigh she knocked at the door to have it unlocked again. The man complied after exactly five seconds, as he always did. Today he wasn’t very talk active, but she didn’t mind. She had heard the story of how everyone had left him so often she really didn’t care anymore. And it gave her time to go through her plan again.

The man’s dark eyes wandered around. He always let her walk in front of him, maybe so he could stare at her. She almost scoffed at the thought.

Then, as they passed the corner that lead into the living room where she was kept, she grabbed the small statue from the side table next to the stair case, turned in a swift movement and slammed it into his head. He howled in pain and reeled back. She didn’t waste the time to look at the damage and instantly darted for the open window. He was behind her now; unexpectedly fast for someone oh his weight. He grabbed her sleeve, pulled her back. She kicked and screamed at him, slipped off the tiles and landed hard on her hip. She bit back a pained grunt and kicked at him again when he grabbed her leg and dragged her back into the hallway.

She gripped the doorframe of the kitchen, panicked and with strength she was surprised of. He pulled, but couldn’t get her any further, his panting breath rang in her ears and she kicked at him again, this time most likely hitting a vital area, as his grunt suggested. He let go of her, grabbed after her immediately but she managed to lunge forward, limped to the window and finally managed to get out of there.

She was almost glad about the sun setting, even if that meant she would freeze. Sure enough she heard a car not long after she had jumped out the window. Her feet scratched by thorns and whatever had been lying around the house, she headed into the forest. Anywhere was fine, as long as it was away from this man. She would find someone soon enough. Maybe someone who gave her a bit of money so she could at least take a bus home.

The car passed her slowly and she was certain the man had seen her, so she headed deeper into the woods, stumbled over roots and hit her face at a tree. She scoffed at the ridiculousness of it when she stepped into a puddle and growled at herself when it crossed her mind that going through a forest at this time wasn’t a bright idea.  Who knew what was running around there at night.

The car turned, she could still see it quite well. She pressed herself into the wet ground. She didn’t even want to think about all the bugs running around as the car passed her again. She waited for a few more seconds and jumped back to her feet, then ran down the road. The car didn’t follow her; she assumed the man hadn’t seen her. This had seemed so easy; getting back home was probably not that hard either. He still had everything of her. But if he dared to go to her address, he would be in for a surprise. She didn’t have pictures of her family anywhere, except her phone. But that was dead. The man didn’t know that she wasn’t living alone.

When she had reached the end of the road, she realized that she was in the middle of nowhere; had no idea where to go and no one seemed to live in the area at all. She couldn’t see any houses or lights.  And now her only choice was to continue into an unknown direction hoping to find someone, or head back to the man. Alternatively she could also freeze to death.

With a growl she chose the first option. Anything was better than to return to that person. She would find someone sooner or later. Her thoughts were focused on that. She had to be positive and open minded. Bad things happened to everyone, it was the way one reacted to them that made them worse or better. Rose refused to give in to the small nagging voice that this was futile and that the man or someone else would find her. It had been a long time since she had last listened to that little voice and she wouldn’t start again with it now. She could make this, she had been though worse. Being in constant hiding from the patriots was even a lot more boring than this.

Yet, she knew that if she didn’t find some safety soon, she was screwed. Summer was ending and the evenings were colder. Now she also noticed that she was hungry and thirsty and quite tired too. There had to be a house somewhere!

About two hours later she finally found what seemed to be an ancient phone booth. It was better than nothing she thought when she opened the creaking door and stepped inside. Water had collected at the ground of it and the light was flickering on and off. The windows where cracked and crawled on with permanent markers.

 She had already taken the receiver when she realized she had no money on her. Figuring that it didn’t matter if she called the police she did just that, only to notice that the line was completely dead.

Frustrated she punched the phone and left the booth again, rubbing her hand as she continued down the road. The air was getting colder, creeping into her light clothing. But she kept on walking, not quite caring how much her feet and hip hurt when she finally saw some light in the distance. She could rest when she was home. She walked faster for a while, then noticed it was just a lamppost in the middle of nowhere. There were more of them though, leading down a road. She nodded to herself and followed them, surprised at the lack of cars and people around. She had no idea there were places in this country that were so dead.

Now with someone that could chase her, she wondered where to go. A crowded place seemed to be the best choice, yet the real challenge was to find something like that around here. If anything she was a spy, not someone trained in finding things in the middle of nowhere, that was Jack’s thing.

She scoffed slightly at the thought. Would that actually help him find her?

 After a while she saw some people, but whenever she tried to talk to them they hurried away. She didn’t look like the most presentable person at the moment, she was well aware of that, but it still hurt that people were so distant. Her clothing was filthy and she didn’t smell great either, she most likely looked like a homeless person. Some people didn’t even dare to look at her twice. It was about eleven in the evening, the time she usually headed to bed at, when things had still been normal.

She had to contact someone, couldn’t decide if that should be the police first, or her husband.

When she almost ran into a younger woman, most likely even a teenager she grabbed her by the sleeve. The younger woman stared at her with wide eyes and reeled back in surprise.

“Can I use your phone-“ Rose asked, desperation filled her voice. “I just need to make a quick phone call-“

The woman pushed her aside, snarled and hurried down the road. Rose glared at her, too tired to run after her. Under normal circumstances she would have made a scene. But people would have given her their phone if she had looked differently.

 On the other side of the road she saw a bar, some rundown place. There had to be a phone. She cursed under her breath when she entered it. The place was pretty empty and people looked up at her.

The barkeeper looked at her, rolled his eyes when she came closer. “I need to use your phone.” Now she almost begged.

“What, gotta call your sugar daddy to buy you some drinks?” the man laughed at her.

Rose grabbed his collar and pulled him closer with a strength she didn’t expect she still had. “I’ve been running around in this hellhole for too long to be refused a simple phone call. Get me the damn phone. Now!” She was so fed up with everything. Now that she was in an actual building and warmth surrounded her, the small nagging voice inside her had died down and realization hit her. She had no idea where she was, she had no money, nothing to prove who she was. 

This feeling reminded her of a long time ago when she had first met Jack. She was nothing at the time too.

She was handed a cell phone and headed to a quiet area of the bar. She stared at the phone for a few seconds, then decided she needed to call Jack first. She wasn’t in immediate danger, she assumed and he was most likely going mad, if he hadn’t already. He could take care of John, she wasn’t worried about that, but he would have his own thoughts and theories on where she was.

She wondered how she still remembered his cell phone number, as she hadn’t needed to use it in years. But she shoved the thought away, held the phone to her ear and waited. It took long seconds before someone picked up.

“Who is this?” a strained and weak voice hissed.

Her words got caught in her throat. Hearing his voice now made her tear up. She hadn’t dared to think too much about how much she missed him and John and her hands were now trembling.

“Jack…” she whispered, bit down hard on her lip to suppress all the tears that welled up in her eyes. “I… don’t know where I am, but I managed to get away.” She figured he needed that information first.

“Rose…?” he sounded surprised, maybe even hopeful.

“Yes…” she managed to say, hastily wiped the tears away when people started looking at her. His voice told her that he wasn’t great off either. Whatever he was going through, it wasn’t pleasant. “I’ll call the police in a bit… I just wanted to tell you that I am okay.” Her voice almost gave out then.

“What the hell happened…?” he asked silently now, his voice hoarse and trembling. “Where are you…”

“I was robbed.” Rose swallowed hard, “I don’t know where I am.” She repeated, took the phone down in surprise when five young men entered, and the man that had captured her appeared behind them. Things happened in a blur after that. The phone was ripped from her hands, things shattered and soon enough she was wrestled to the ground, tied up and back in a car to an unknown position.

She hadn’t even had a chance to call the police and none of the people in the bar seemed to care enough to help her, despite her struggles. First it had just been one man. Not it was six. Why? What the hell did they want from her?

“You’re not going to escape this time.” One of the younger men growled. They had blindfolded her and she could only rely on sounds. There was no way she could recognize the road.

“What do you want with me?” She finally asked, but was denied an answer. Someone grabbed her chin and pulled her close with such a force, for a moment she was afraid he’d break her jaw.

“Don’t ask stupid questions.” He warned her. “Be a good girl and stay quiet and nothing will happen to you.”

She growled silently. There were many questions burning in her mind, but she knew she couldn’t physically handle six men at once. She could barely handle one.

Deciding to wait for a half an hour she went quiet and closed her eyes behind the blindfold. Keeping them open seemed useless and the constant blinking against the fabric was rather uncomfortable as well.

Fifteen minutes must’ve passed when the car stopped. They moved out of the car, dragged her along. When she stumbled over something she couldn’t identify, one of the men draped her over his shoulder. She chose to stay silent. Whatever they wanted, she was important to them. She could put that to use to buy some time.

Soon enough she was sat down, her hands chained to what seemed to be a supporting beam. Someone had even procured a cushion for her to sit on. Hushed voiced mumbled for a moment, Rose couldn’t understand any of it. Then the blindfold was removed.

 She blinked against the dim light for a moment, waited for her eyes to adjust. In the room where three of the young men, the other two and her original captor nowhere to be seen.

“Our friend seems to have messed up a bit.” One of the men told her. She found it strange that all of them ran around in suits and sunglasses. What were they? The mafia? “He was supposed to bring you here today, but instead you managed to escape. He is being punished for it as we speak.”

Rose felt a strange feeling settle in her stomach. Were they killing him?

“What do you want from me?” she asked once more, made sure her voice was devoid of any emotion. She wouldn’t give them anything to use against her. Her mind was strong, she could handle this.

“You see, we have been watching you for a while.” Another man answered. He had short dark hair and was a bit shorter than the other two. “Normal woman in her early thirties, husband, son. Two cars, decent paying Job, friends, extended family. A perfectly normal woman in a perfectly normal town.”

Rose had no idea what he was getting at. Was it money they wanted? They would be in for a surprise if it was that. Most of the money she and Jack made was going to the rent for the house and maintenance. There wasn’t much to take.

“Yet,” The man continued, “There is something strange about this, don’t you think?”

“What’s strange about it?” She asked, voice professional and level. No emotion, no hint at her thoughts.

“Nobody has a perfect life. So we dug around after our friend got your ID.”

Rose resisted the urge to roll her eyes. What would they find? She was a normal woman on paper, most records suggesting otherwise had been erased years ago.

“If you wouldn’t have been of use, we would have killed you, but we found a rather interesting little thing in your past.”

“And that is what?” she asked, still rather unimpressed at his ability to beat around the bush. She could do that too. Better than he did.

“You used to be a spy.”

Now her face fell. For a second she stared at him in surprise and confusion, memories of much darker days emerging in her mind. If they had found this out, they had dug deep. Very deep.

Seconds passed in silence and she returned to her cold expression. “What makes you so sure?” she shot back.

“You can work with us, or we’ll kill you and find another person.” The man told her, ignoring her question.

“What do you need me for?”

He chuckled. “I see we’re on the same page now.”

Another man stepped forward, he was so tall he almost hit his head at the ceiling. “If you work with us, we’ll release you after we’re done. If you don’t… you’re dead.”

Rose suppressed a sigh and wondered if they had escaped from a movie and didn’t notice that they were done filming. Sure they threatened her life, but they seemed to have forgotten that she had a wide knowledge of the human mind. She could manipulate without them ever realizing.

“Assuming I work for you, what do I get if I do?”

“We spare your life.” The third guy now answered. He appeared to be the youngest.

“I want a bit more than that if I have to work with you.”

The young man rushed towards her but was stopped by the tall one. “You are in no position to-“

“Then kill me.” Rose shrugged. She was gambling with her life there, but she knew she already had them wrapped around her finger. They were dumb, untrained. Amateurs. She had been a spy for long enough to know all the tricks people played.

The dark haired man held a gun at her, finger on the trigger.

She stared right into his eyes, even through the sunglasses. “Do it.” She provoked him. There was no fear in her voice or eyes. She had been in a situation like this before. That time the man had shot at her. Rose still was surprised that Jack believed the graze scar on her shoulder to be a harmless scar she had sustained as a child.

This man didn’t shoot. He let the gun sink with trembling hands and took a few steps backwards. She knew he wouldn’t shoot.

Now she had to get them tie her loose and leave the house. The rest would be easier. They were a lot easier to manipulate than the old guy that had kept her at first. He would be tough to crack if he showed up again. These guys though, were like babies waiting for candy.

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a mix of two, i usually don't switch PoV's but with this story it feels more dynamic and less stiff.
> 
> Hope you still like it, this chapter took a lot of work and it probably isn't that great haha.

Jack sat in the living room, still leaned against the couch even after the night had passed and sunlight was shining through the windows. He had been so trapped in his thoughts that time itself seemed to vanish and just left him there to dwell on his mistakes. The feeling wasn’t new. It was so familiar that it felt as if it had never left. The past few years seemed to have been erased from his mind. He had been alone this whole time, wasn’t it like that? Hadn’t he just imagined things? Fantasized about how everything was working out normally?

He hadn’t moved a hair after slumping down where he was the previous night. He hadn’t slept either. His panic had died down eventually and almost left him completely numb to any sensation that wasn’t rage.  He wanted to give in to it, but there was no one to let it out on.

Had the past five years even existed the way he remembered them? Had he really been with Rose and John? Did John even exist? When the thought crossed his mind he instantly directed his gaze at the picture frames on the walls. They definitely showed a boy about John’s age, and a woman that looked like Rose. But where these people really who he thought they were?

Slowly he pulled himself back to his feet, hit his knee at the glass table and frowned. He hadn’t expected pain to flow through him like it used to do decades ago, but he had expected to feel something. The sensation had been extremely dull; it was barely notable. Fear flared up again. What was it now? Was it his mind playing tricks or the body malfunctioning? He had put off maintenance for the sake of paying rent, but he would have noticed an error. Then he remembered that he had ignored all the errors the previous day. He hadn’t paid attention at all, was too occupied with his rage and sorrow to spare any second on them. Now that came back to bite him, he assumed.

On shaking legs he made his way to the briefcase with the laptop inside. Any error was one too many, especially now.  He opened the combination lock on the briefcase and pulled out the laptop with shaking hands and settled down on the couch. He almost dropped it when he set it on the coffee table. Something was definitely not right. And this now when all he wanted was to find a way to get John back and finally find Rose.

He flinched. Rose. That was the whole reason why everything was so weird. Rose still wasn’t there.

He connected cords to the laptop and struggled to find the port on his neck. He had done this so often, why couldn’t he find it now? Was it because his hands were shaking so badly?  He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and finally managed to find the port shortly before his cell phone rang.

He flinched, the noise surprising him. Who was it at this hour? It was barely seven am.  He gazed at the number that was displayed on the blinking screen.  It was none he knew, but he accepted the call anyway. He was confused, worried and still somehow hopeful.

When no one spoke he dared to speak first, “Who is this?” he grimaced when he heard his own voice. It displayed just about anything he had felt in the past hours, the desperation, frustration, fear.

“Jack…”

He froze, held his breath. A female voice, addressing him by his first name. There were only two people who did that and this definitely wasn’t Sunny. The spark of hope had him gasp, he couldn’t believe it. But his joy was short lived.  Was this actually who he thought it was?

Afraid to be disappointed again he wanted to set things clear right away. “Rose…?” It felt strange to say this name and actually address a person with it. The past three weeks she had been like a phantom in his mind. Someone who used to be there, but somehow wasn’t.

“Yes…”

Jack couldn’t believe his ears. She said more but he was too busy processing that this was his wife and that she was alive, to understand what she was saying. Rose was alive. Did she want him to pick her up? Where was she?

Asking her just that, she told him about having been robbed and being somewhere she didn’t know. He had more questions, but her sentence was abruptly cut off when the cell-phone seemingly clattered to the ground. He heard her scream and darted into the hallway, ripped the laptop off the table in the process and almost fell. He yanked on the cords, tossed them to the ground and stumbled into the hallway.

His fit of rushing to help her was short lived when he realized he had no idea where she was. But she was obviously in danger _now_ if she hadn’t been before. He went through his options. Rushing outside, blinded by rage and fear was a dumb thing to do, he had done it often enough to know it never yielded the wanted results. Then his mind wandered to Sunny. The girl certainly could trace a damned cell phone!

He turned back to his phone, made it creak in protest at how tightly he gripped it when he called Sunny. The screen split in two at the sheer force of his grip and he cursed silently. The phone itself was still working, yet this would pile another bill on top of the many unpaid others.

He cursed once more when a tired sounding Sunny finally picked up and greeted him with a mumbled, “Evening…”

“Rose just called me. You need to trace a phone number.” He hissed, too focused on the issue at hand to spend time with being friendly. He would apologize for it later, now seconds mattered. Sunny would live through it.

Without even waiting for her reply he told her the number that had just called him. He knew sunny didn’t like to tell him that he had to wait for a while until she got a result, but he accepted it and ended the call.

The cracks on the screen had something hypnotic to it, he thought. He gazed at them for a long time, thought about lots of things while doing so, but couldn’t remember any of it once he snapped back to reality. Eyelids heavy he leaned back against the couch and grabbed the blanket that had been forgotten there. He wanted to find Rose soon. Then things would work out. John would be able to return home too.

He realized it was all just wishful thinking. Even though things usually worked out fine, it was always just barely. Always by a hair. When would this peace finally be torn apart? Happiness was always timed, why had he ever thought otherwise? Things never stayed normal quite long enough.

 

* * *

 

 

Meryl carefully watched the boy sitting across from her. His body language spoke for itself; he didn’t want to be here. The building had been addressed as a ‘Home for children’ but in all reality it was just an orphanage. She was slightly mad at the fact that they had put the boy here instead of bringing him over to friends right away. John hadn’t once lifted his head, Meryl wasn’t even sure if he had noticed her. He sat on the chair, knees hugged to his chest and tightly holding on to a tiny Lego figure with a sword.

She had already talked to the person in charge and after filling out some paperwork and confirming her ID she had been lead to a small room that vaguely resembled a living room. There was no one else inside, except for John, at this time most kids were probably in school. She wondered why he wasn’t but didn’t dwell on it.

“John?” She asked silently and for the first time since she had entered the room the boy reacted to her presence. Slowly he lifted his head, a dark bruise on his cheek and his lip split. Looked like he had gotten into a fight with someone.

He frowned at her, blue eyes widening in surprise when he recognized her. A second of happiness washed over her, she hadn’t seen the boy in years; that he still remembered her made this a lot easier.

“Your dad asked me to pick you up.”

The boy gripped the figure tighter, clutched it as if it was irreplaceable. She assumed it held emotional value for him.

“Johnny is waiting in the car.”

“Where are we going?”

Meryl winced at the hoarse voice of the boy, he had cried, that was quite obvious and she understood him. Things were rough, first his mother went missing and now he had been thrown into a place like this. His hand slipped into hers before she had even replied. He seemed eager to just get out of this building. Something about it felt eerie, and it wasn’t the fact that it was an old building.

John followed her through the hallway and stayed absolutely silent when the woman Meryl had talked to earlier told him that everything would work out. Meryl wanted to scoff. If this woman had any idea how fucked up the world the boy had been born into was, she wouldn’t have said anything like it.  But it was likely that John himself had no idea what had happened all those years in the past.

“A hotel for now.” She told him when they had just exited the building.

John stopped in his tracks, stared at her and took a step backwards. When she turned to look at him he hung his head. “… I wanna stay with dad.” He muttered.

Meryl hung her shoulders and gently pulled him along. “I’m not allowed to do that…” she showed him the stack of paperwork she had to fill out earlier.  “If I do they put you back there and then you have to stay.”

Reluctantly the boy followed her. “Can I at least talk to him on the phone?”

She led him down the road to where Johnny had parked the car and nodded. “Of course. I really don’t want to keep you away from him, but I can’t do anything.”

The boy took a few fast steps and was in front of her. She stopped, frowned slightly when he looked at her with such determination that it made her neck hair stand up. His eyes looked way too intimidating to be those of a ten year old. She couldn’t say that she had ever felt threatened by a child before, but this gaze made her feel uneasy. How did he do that? She was a soldier; she had seen lots of intimidating gazes but never from a child.

“Roy could!” John exclaimed. “I know he can!”

Meryl blinked at him in surprise, had expected him to throw a fit instead of firing a logical solution at her. He was smart for a ten year old. But he was still just a child and this was very obvious to her when he grabbed her shirt and yanked on it. “I wanna go home! Please! Dad’s all alone!”

His gaze pulled at her. He looked so desperate and maybe even scared now. There certainly was something she couldn’t piece together yet. She wondered if she would find out.

“He’s an adult,” She interfered. “He-“

“You don’t understand!” John now shouted, gripped her shirt tighter and for a second she was afraid he would tear it apart. “Dad doesn’t like to be alone! He really hates it!”

This made a little more sense to her, but she wondered why the boy knew things like that. Wasn’t it a parent’s job to keep children from being worried about them? Just how weird was this family?

“How do you know?” she blabbed, fed up both with her thoughts and the behavior of the boy. Why couldn’t he just quietly come along and shut up? They would figure things out once they were in the hotel. But the boy had to throw a fit now. Typical.

“I just do!” John yelled at her. “He always calls us when he’s off missions and he really doesn’t like to hang up! And he gets really sad when he needs to leave for work again!”

Meryl softened at that. John had made his own assumptions by observing. He really was smarter than she had expected. “I’ll talk to my father later… but now we go to the hotel.”

The boy opened his mouth to argue, but finally realized that it was no use and walked besides her towards the car. His small fists were clenched at the glare he was giving the pavement almost made her give in then. But this was for the better for now, until everything was resolved. She still didn’t understand everything behind it.

“Why did you end up there anyway?” She asked casually when they had almost reached the car.

“Because of nothing.” The boy hissed. “Dad and I had an argument, that’s all!”

Meryl frowned at that. Kids often argued with their parents, so why did this take a turn like that?

“It’s just because everyone thinks he’s a bad guy!” John angrily stomped the ground to make his point clear. “I want to hit them for thinking that! All the time we get stared at and people ask stupid questions! Why can’t they leave us alone?!”

“I don’t know him that well, but I think he’s a good person. Maybe a bit unconventional, but he fights for the right things…”

“I think my teacher did this…”

Meryl crouched down now, one hand on the shoulder of the boy and a slightly confused gaze in her eyes. “Your teacher did what?”

“She called these people. That one day Dad left me alone because he was looking for a job and I got mad and I told my friend in school the next day… and my teacher overheard us. A-and I haven’t been in school this week…”

He was shaking, eyes filled with tears. “I just want mom to come back!” He shouted, tears finally spilling.

Meryl instantly reached out and pulled him into a hug, couldn’t stand to see him cry. “I’m sure your mother will come back.” She tried to sound as comforting as possible. She had never liked Rose much -for obvious reasons- even after everything had been resolved, yet she would have never wished anything like that to happen.

“But what if she ran away?” John argued, “Or what if she-“

Meryl shook her head, rubbed his back. “We’ll find her. I’ll have Roy do something too, okay?” She reassured and slowly pulled away when John was starting to calm down.

She carefully took his hand and they walked over to the car Johnny was standing at. At the sight of John his soft smile well and his expression turned sad. They had never had much interaction, but Johnny remembered the boy to be lively and very polite.

Now in the car John was silent and stared out the window as if it was at fault for what had happened. When Meryl handed him a cell phone he grasped it so quickly it almost dropped to the ground. John didn’t focus on the driving and the arguing about which side to drive on when he dialed the number of the phone at home and waited.

When no one picked up he looked up at Meryl and Johnny, a strange fear spreading inside him. “He’s not picking up…”

“Maybe he’s in the bathroom-“

“That’s not funny!” John yelled immediately. “We need to go there!”

“John-“ Meryl tried but the boy gripped her seat and shook it to make his point clear, “Please! You can say that I bribed you or something!”

Meryl sighed in annoyance, but turned the car around. John wanted to feel happy, but couldn’t.

 

* * *

 

 

Jack felt his mind drift away, finally forcing the heavy weight of lacking sleep on him, when the phone rang. He was too tired to care and just let his mind slip further.  Then, what felt like minutes later, the doorbell rang.

At first he passed it off, didn’t want to get up, but whoever was at the door wasn’t having any of it. The doorbell kept ringing and he eventually got up from the carpet, swayed heavily and stumbled into the wall before he made it into the hallway to open the door.

Sure enough he was surprised to see two people standing there, drenched by rain. He hadn’t even noticed it had started to rain.

He didn’t have time to greet them when dizziness washed over him and forced him to his knees. He gripped the cabinet, almost tipped it over. He barely noticed that the woman of the two had lunged forward and kept him from splitting his skull at the concrete stairs. Things moved in a blur as he brought a hand to his head in a futile attempt to get rid of the damned dizziness. Where was it coming from anyway?

The front door was shut, things tossed to the ground, and someone grabbed his shoulders in a rather uncomfortable way.

 “What the hell is wrong with you?” It almost sounded like an accusation.

He squinted at her, finally able to make out her features and recognize her.

“Meryl…” he mumbled, unable to move properly. Something was definitely wrong and he doubted it was just lack of sleep.

“Hell, you look like a ghost.” She hissed, somehow managed to haul him up over her shoulder and drag him into the living room. Jack spent a full minute wondering how she still remembered the rooms, before he frowned at his own thoughts and shook his head.

His vision eventually cleared and the dizziness subsided. His body still had to catch on, the reactions were extremely slow.

“What are you doing here…?” he finally managed to see after long seconds of being unable to control his voice. He hated that the most about all of this at the moment.

“You begged me to pick your son up, did you forget hat?” Meryl growled. She tried to sound angry, but concern was clear in her eyes. “But never mind that, the hell is wrong with **you**?”

Jack didn’t bother to tell her, he wasn’t too sure himself yet.

“The boy begged me to go here, was hell-bent on something being wrong.” She continued. “So, what is it?”

“Where’s John?” He tried to avoid the question.

“Answer me first.”

The glare he gave her left her with a cold shiver running down her spine. Just what was it in this glare that made her so uneasy? John had this exact same look in his eyes earlier. Now she at least knew where the boy had it from.

“…I got a call from Rose, but before she could tell me where she was someone took her away again… I-I heard her scream-“

Meryl sighed deeply. “And you didn’t do anything to find her?”

Again her eyes met that intense glare. This time she looked away. “Sunny is trying to figure out where the Cell phone is. I wouldn’t be sitting here if I had any idea where to start.”

“John’s in the car.” Meryl told him them, nodded to the front door.


	6. Chapter 6

He stared at Meryl for a moment longer before he dared to get up again. John was close, just a few steps away from him. He could apologize to him now, and still he wanted to run. What he had done couldn’t be forgiven, even when this was now over. John would stay with Meryl for a while, but would the boy be okay?

Meryl raised her eyebrows when she saw him standing there idly, seemingly confused. “You gonna go to him or not?”

His nod was slow and uncertain, steps heavy when he made it to the front door. John was already staring at him from inside the car. Without missing a beat the boy opened the door and ran towards his father to hug him. Jack already had an apology on his lips when John spoke silently.

“I wanna stay here…”

Jack wrapped his arms around the boy and met Meryl’s eyes who sighed and hung her shoulders as she shook her head. “You can’t.” She told John. “I already explained why. I don’t want to keep you away from your family, but this is what I signed. You’re not even allowed to be here at the moment. You understand?”

John bit his trembling lip, but nodded slowly and pulled away. “I’m sorry, dad. I can’t stay here…”

Instead of replying Jack kissed the boy’s forehead and forced a smile onto his lips. “We’ll work this out, okay?”

“If you were a normal human they wouldn’t care at all…” The boy grumbled in frustration, fists clenched and face scrunched up in anger. “Why is everyone so mad at you? You never did anything!”

Jack saw Meryl raise her eyebrows again and he tried hard to tell her by his expression alone to keep her mouth shut about anything she knew. “I know you can handle this for a few days.”

John nodded without looking at his father. The pavement seemed so much more interesting. “But can you?”

“Trying my best.”

John nodded once, hugged the man tightly before he climbed back into the car. “Meryl said that mom will come back.” He muttered after he had shut the door and rolled the window down. “…do you think she will?”

Jack nodded, moved closer to the window and put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Your mother is out there. And I will find her.” He promised, chose to stay quiet about the call. He didn’t want John to get excited about it, didn’t want to seed false hope. Who knew if Rose was still alive.

When he was about to turn away to face Meryl, his cell phone rang. As quickly as he picked up, as quickly he want to throw it across the lawn. It was Sunny. With good and bad news.

“The cell phone’s location is in a bar about two hours away from your house. It’s a really small place town, there’s barely any information about it. But she was there a few hours ago. Kidnappers could have gotten ri-“

“I know!” He barked into the phone, shutting the girl up immediately. “I know, Sunny. Don’t say it.”

She sighed and he could almost see her hang her tiny shoulders in resignation. “A-anyway, this is what I found out… I’m sorry I can’t do more from here…”

Jack wanted to slap himself for yelling at her. She really had nothing to do with it all, and still she helped. He felt guilty for his short temper, especially towards the girl and John. No one was at fault for this, except maybe himself. If he had picked Rose up that day, nothing would have happened. He could have fought them off and they wouldn’t have tried again. That was the lie he was telling himself now. If only he would have been there-

Meryl’s hand on his shoulder ripped him out of his thoughts. “What did she find out?”

He blinked in confusion, needed a second to register her words. “The location of the cell-phone.”

The woman immediately turned her attention to her own cell phone, looked through her contacts and called someone. Jack didn’t question who it was, he was almost certain he already knew who it would be.

“We have a location.” She simply said, relayed the information Jack was giving her and blabbed something about search troupes and getting secret services involved.

Jack felt a heavy weight settle down on him. This was now officially dangerous. It wasn’t just a threat to his wife anymore, now Roy took it upon himself to find Rose. Jack couldn’t help but feel a little bitter about it.

“Roy says to leave the local police out of this, they’re, let me quote him on that: ‘idiots who get paid to turn people away’.” Meryl told him.

Jack would have smiled at that if his mood had been any better, but he could barely feel relieved over the fact that someone finally believed that he had nothing to do with Rose’s disappearance. He knew they would find him. Roy would force them to turn over every single rock, but Jack wasn’t sure if he did it for him, or perhaps for his own reasons.

The cyborg couldn’t say he was on good terms with Campbell after everything that had happened, despite knowing the reasoning behind it by now.

When Meryl hung up, she grabbed his arm and pulled him closer. The movement caught him off guard and he stumbled, needed a second to steady himself. “You will stay here, and you will _not_ go find her yourself, you hear me?” She poked his chest as if to make her point clear.

He opened his mouth to argue and she whacked her palm over the back of his head. “Everyone knows how reckless you can get, Raiden. I don’t want to see you walking half dead through corridors, ever again, got that?”

He felt a little like a scolded child when he nodded.

Meryl gave him a quick hug that left him feel quite embarrassed when she got back into the car. John waved until the car disappeared from sight and he felt himself standing there for a few more minutes, waving to someone who wasn’t there.

Meryl’s words echoed in his mind when he went inside, left to dwell on the matter at hand, and the broken screen of his cell-phone. That didn’t bother him too much when he noticed that the laptop he had knocked over earlier was displaying an error message that made it very clear that the little fall had damaged the device. He resisted the urge the throw it across the room and make things worse, and sat down on the couch.

Now that he had a location he could try to find Rose on his own. Meryl was no one he needed to listen to, it was his own decision. He shoved some errors away that forced their way in his field of vision. It was okay for a few more days, he tried to tell himself. He knew he was gambling now, putting off maintenance was never a good idea, but he couldn’t be bothered to worry about himself when Rose was most likely in immediate danger.

He couldn’t stand the thought of having to wait any second longer without doing anything to help Rose, and so he grabbed his car keys and was driving towards the small town Sunny had told him about, before he really registered what he was doing.

 

* * *

 

 

When Rose opened her eyes she was in a different place than she had been the last time her mind was clear enough to think. Had they drugged her? She was sure they had put something in her system as her hands and legs felt numb and sort of out of place. She barely even noticed that her feet were chained together by a handcuff. So much for trying to get away. With this thing she couldn’t hope to run fast enough to escape any of them.

Carefully she looked around. She was in what appeared to be a big hall with a high up roof, most likely an old warehouse. Someone had thrown blankets on the ground where she was sitting; one was over her shoulders and provided some warmth. She got the feeling that they tried anything to make her comfortable as long as they still needed her. Once they had their information, she would be useless to them and was most likely disposed of, whatever else they said; she knew how these people worked. Still, finding out information on this level required a computer with internet access. That gave her some sort of hope for an escape, or at least being able to call for help. And if that didn’t work, she could at least leave a trace to her captors and potential killers later on.

 She was grateful for her free hands, her wrists still sore and bruised from the cloth that held her in place for almost three weeks. The freedom of movement was almost painful, her joints stiff and complaining at every movement. It would go away. There was a bag with junk food next to her. When she reached out she found a note sticking to the bag.

“Eat. After that walk down the hall at the gate marked ‘E1’.”

She glanced around, noticed the warehouse had branched out hallways, each assigned to a letter and a number. It didn’t take long for her to notice the gate in question, but she already thought about escaping. They must have trusted her enough to leave her there on her own.

Her growling stomach made sure she did not forget to actually eat something. And so she made her way through a cheese burger and a cup of soda. It wasn’t much, but certainly enough to keep her going for a while longer. When she tossed the wrapper into the paper bag and decided to take the soda with her, the sticky note well to the ground and landed on the writing. She then noticed that there was something else written on it.

“You better not be thinking about running.”

She scoffed at it, assumed no one would actually watch her, otherwise someone would have already made their way here.

When she stood she saw something glisten a few steps away from her. Curious but also a little concerned she stopped moving and tilted her head. It was just for a second but when she held her head a certain way she could see red beams going from one side of the wall to the other. She didn’t have to question what those were. It had been a while ago, but she certainly remembered that IR beams were usually connected to alarms or bombs. She briefly considered throwing the bag through the beams to break them, but decided against it. Who knew what that would do.

A few more minutes of looking around told her that this old warehouse had nothing much to offer except copious amounts of cardboard boxes. A small smile crossed her lips when she thought back on other times. For a second or two she expected a certain person to jump out of the pile or at least one of the boxes to move, but neither Snake nor Jack were anywhere close and she forced herself to think back to the matter at hand. Yet, the lingering thought of her husband left her feeling uneasy. If he hadn’t thought it before, he now had to be sure that something was wrong. But how was he going to find her? She hoped he wouldn’t do anything reckless, but she knew better. Jack was a genius when it came to getting in trouble. How he always managed to get out of it alive was beyond her.

Slowly she stood, noticed someone had bothered to bandage her damaged feet, and assumed that at least one of these men cared about her in some way. She chose to take the soda and one of the blankets with her and wandered down the hall she was supposed to. She soon noticed that the space between the cuffs on her ankles was wide enough to walk close to normal steps, but anything faster would most likely trip her.

She passed a few glass doors that had nothing interesting inside and located a room at the far end that had a few computers and three people inside. She wondered where the other three were, but didn’t spend much time on it when one of the men noticed her.

“Sleeping beauty is awake.” He commented. Two other heads turned in her direction.

“Perfect.” One of them got up, pointed to the chair he was sitting on and told her to get to work. There was a piece of paper next to the keyboard on the table with a name and an address.

“This is the person we want to find. So do your magic. Find him.”

Rose took her time to read the name. “Who is he?” She asked, and was silenced with a gun pointed at her.

“No questions. Find him.”

She nodded, unfazed by the gun and got to work. She soon realized that she had the internet at her disposal. And if one of them looked away for just long enough, she could…

“Don’t even think about calling for help. The whole place is rigged with mines; they wouldn’t even get close to us.”

Rose resisted the urge to scoff. Jack had certainly faced more threatening devices. But she wasn’t going to take any chances. Still, he was most likely the only person to actually look for her outside the city they lived in. But she doubted that he’d find her.

The clock at the edge of the screen told her that it was 5:12 am, and that it was now a full month since she had last seen her son and her husband. She was beginning to question if she would ever see them again.

Minutes after she had brought up an ancient search engine, she began to look for the name on the paper.  Two of the men left, the third sat next to her, eyes glued on the screen to see if she did anything other than what she was supposed to do. For the first thirty minutes she tried, looked through entries and was getting fed up with the information she got. This wasn’t what she wanted to do at all, but the man never looked away from the screen. Then, when she finished the soda, the man offered to get her a cup of coffee.

Realizing this was her only chance at sending a message, she agreed and saw him leave. He was most likely getting instant coffee, her timeframe was incredibly thin. And so she used a different approach. Her hacking skills were nowhere as refined as those of the person who had built the search engine, but Hal had told her about a backdoor on it ages ago when Sunny had told her about the engine and was excited about how it worked just as well as anything else.

She wasn’t sure if this had been fixed by now, yet it was her only try and she quickly typed a string of works that would cause an error and notify the creator, just as Hal had set it back then. The words were random, and the error would display the IP address to Hal. She had just pressed enter and sent it, hoping it would do what she expected, when the man returned with a steaming mug of coffee.

Rose quickly deleted her words and typed in something else when he sat down the mug and waited with crossed arms.

“You know, we expect some results by now.” He muttered impatiently.

“Finding people who don’t want to be found isn’t easy.”

“I am sure you can do this. Otherwise we’ll just get rid of you.”

Rose wanted to punch him, yet considering that he was most likely a more or less skilled fighter, she decided against it. She had her words. “What’s your name?” she asked casually while opening another page and looking through that.

“I’ll tell you when you have results.” He muttered. “Aren’t you supposed to hack into somewhere?”

This time Rose rolled her eyes. “You think this is a movie?” It felt almost comfortable to talk with him. Despite the fact that he was carrying a gun. She was sure she could steal it when she waited for the right moment. It wouldn’t be the first time for her to use a gun. She had basic training. But that had been decades ago.

“I was told you can find out what we want to know. I trust that you really are what the papers said.”

She needed to whip out some information, but he obviously had no knowledge about computers, she could keep him occupied with that for a while.

“What did the papers say?” She asked without taking her eyes off the screen. Eventually she had to get some valid information, but who knew if they would kill her right away? Maybe she could get away with another hour. Maybe two. Maybe only minutes. They needed her, but what if they decided that she wasn’t useful after all?

Without realizing it she began to worry. Her hands had begun to tremble ever so slightly, and when the two other men returned she almost knocked over the coffee.  There was another search engine she could use if her log in data still worked. It was a database on almost any citizen of the world. With a few exceptions. She had never been able to find her husband there. But everyone who had been registered to some sort of database, also showed up there. Her safest bet was to use this to find the person.

But when she entered her log in data, the “access denied” screen flash in her face just seconds before she heard a gunshot and her own pained scream. Her hand flew to her right shoulder, the coffee mug now fell, hot coffee ran over the table, her legs, the floor. She didn’t take note of it. Her shoulder seemed much more important. All she really realized what that the bullet had gone through and disappeared somewhere. There was a commotion around her, the men yelled at each other for a moment, then there was silence and Rose felt blood trickling through her fingers. Tears stung in her eyes. This was a pain she hadn’t endured yet. The graze wound all those years ago didn’t hurt nearly as much. The man from earlier turned the chair around to look at her.  For some strange reason he seemed concerned. Rose couldn’t care less at the moment. She could barely move and she felt so sick.

Why had that man shot her? And why was the other so concerned? Had he actually found a liking to her? She didn’t even know his name.

“I apologize for my friend, he’s a little trigger happy.”

Rose wanted to spit into his face, but her mouth was dry and she was sure that the cheeseburger would resurface should she open it now.

She didn’t struggle when the man cut open her blazer and her blouse. Both had been ruined even prior to this. He didn’t seem to take any interest in her breasts when he looked at the wound in her shoulder. “Went straight through.” He commented.

Rose wanted to slap him for that but the pain kept her from thinking clearly. She almost passed out when he treated the wound, and barely managed to avoid it. He gave her painkillers, she didn’t question it. Anything to stop the agony.

He told her to wait until they kicked in and then continue. Then he left the room and locked the door. She could hear loud arguing, but didn’t care when she tried to find a position that didn’t cause the pain to flare up, and almost fell asleep when the painkillers finally kicked in.

Then suddenly the building shook and she almost jumped off the chair when she hid under the table to escape whatever that had been. And explosion? Had someone triggered the beams she had seen earlier?

The arguing had stopped too. Another explosion, then footsteps and yelling. The men were seemingly surprised and annoyed. Had someone actually found their way here? Was someone finally coming to get her out of there?

 

* * *

 

 

Finding the town was easy, the bar as well. He even found the owner of the cell phone but all information Jack could get was, “Five men took her away.” That in itself was alarming. He later found out that it was a black car and that someone at the bar had written down the license plate. That man had apparently found it suspicious that five men dragged a screaming woman into a car.

He almost punched the man for being such an idiot, then reminded himself that no one here knew Rose and people were cowards in general. At least he got a license plate now, but when he asked Sunny to find information about it, the girl could only tell him that the car had been reported as stolen two weeks ago.

That didn’t get him anywhere either. At least Sunny thought about telling him that Meryl was on her way to pick him up, as she had found out that he had decided to look for Rose, despite her warning. He couldn’t get back to his car when Meryl had already found him. She walked towards him with a look on her face that told him any argument would be invalid and so he just stood and waited.

She didn’t make a scene as he expected she would, but she yelled at him for being irresponsible.

A few hours later they were sitting in a cramped motel room, Meryl glaring daggers at him. They had spent most of the evening trying to find a room and now stayed a bit out of town. He wasn’t happy with it, but Meryl didn’t care when she continued to scold him.

“What the hell were you even thinking? I told you not to go after the trail-“

“I’m not sitting around twiddling thumbs while Rose is in danger. I know you don’t like her, but this goes beyond that, Meryl.”

She sighed loudly and ran a hand through her hair. “Roy did what he could; he has people search this area. She was here; she can’t be too far away.”

“Five men took her away. She can be anywhere.”

Meryl lifted an eyebrow. “I’m sure she can defend herself.”

Again he shot her that glare that gave her shivers. “Are you able to fight off five armed men while being unarmed?”

“Of course-“

His glare got even more intense and she couldn’t finish her sentence. When she hung her shoulders and stared at the ground he crossed his arms.

“She has basic training.” He told her then. “But-“

“She can’t fight off five armed men on her own.” Meryl finished for him.

“I’m sure she could talk them to death.”

Meryl grimaced in disbelief. “You’re kidding now.”

He shook his head. “You didn’t know that?”

“I know she likes to talk a lot but-“

“No.” He sighed. “Not like that.”

She frowned, paced around the room for a moment, waiting for him to continue. When he didn’t she urged him on, “Like what then?”

“She can manipulate with just a few words. She analyzes people, she knows what they think and she can act accordingly. But in fighting power she has no chance.”

“You know her well.” Meryl commented for the lack of a better statement.

He flashed her a weak smile. “She’s my wife.”

“And you think she’s in danger.”

“The fact that she’s still alive means that they need her for something. But I am sure they won’t hesitate to get rid of her once they got what they wanted. She most likely knows that too.”

“You think she’s stalling them so we can have time to move?” Meryl wanted to know.

Jack simply nodded when he noticed his cell phone vibrating in his pocket. Meryl wouldn’t let him leave now, but he had to read this message. Slowly he looked around, trying to find an excuse to leave them room.

“I never thought she was like that.”

“There are a lot of things you didn’t think.” He shot back drily. When he saw her fumble with a package of cigarettes he snatched one and headed for the door.

“You’re smoking?” She asked in surprise.

“I gave that up a long time ago.”

“You’re planning on starting again?”

He scoffed. “Maybe.” With that he left the room and shut the door, took his cell phone out and read the message he had gotten.

It was an image file of the town he was in and another with what seemed to be an empty field with a single road. There was a red dot in the middle of nowhere. He frowned at the picture, but looked at the text message that had followed the picture.

“I got contacted by an old search engine I programmed decades ago. It came from the location with the red dot. It’s fairly close to the village with the cell phone. I assume she could be there.”

Jack needed a second to understand who had written the message, then noticed it was Hal. Had he actually pin pointed Rose’s exact location? He had almost darted to his car when Meryl reminded him that she was still there, but exiting the room and lighting up her cigarette. While she was at it, she lit the open he was still holding as well and looked at him for a moment.

“You know, if I wouldn’t know it, it wouldn’t even cross my mind that you’re a cyborg.” She casually told him when she leaned against the wall and stared at the early morning sky.

“Where’d that come from?” he asked silently and slipped the cell phone back into his pocket.

She shrugged, took a drag from her cigarette and fumbled around with a few twigs of dried up ivy at the wall.  “Your son mentioned something about everyone staring and asking dumb questions.”

He chose not to reply to that. Should Meryl think what she wanted. He just hoped she would go to bed soon so he could look for Rose.

“Aren’t you tired- Wait, are you even getting tired?”

He scoffed. If he allowed himself some rest now, he would certainly fall asleep, but he couldn’t do that now. He was so close to finally be reunited with Rose; he couldn’t risk losing this trace.

“Sometimes.” He lied. He hadn’t slept in so long, he lost track of the days. Sooner or later this was going to have severe consequences and knowing his luck this was going to happen sooner than later.

“You should get some sleep.” Meryl suggested then, threw he cigarette into a nearby puddle and headed back inside.

He did the same, but stayed outside for a while longer to look at the message again. She was so close; he couldn’t just leave her alone there. He had to go the first chance he got and when he walked back in and heard Meryl in the bathroom taking a shower he took the chance.

He made sure the door shut silently before he darted back to his car. Once inside he pulled up the GPS and soon found an area that matched with the red dot on the picture Hal had sent him. He didn’t waste any time then, started the engine and drove towards the destination on the map. It wasn’t far. Half an hour maybe.

When he got closer to the location, he killed his car’s lights and looked around. He cursed his lack of weapons, but didn’t care much. He would be able to find something he could use. These men obviously had guns. It was now early in the morning, dawn already setting in. He could see a muddy path leading into a forest. The path had fresh tracks and had a hard time to suppress the spark of hope spreading through him. Just a few hundred meters. Then she would be back with him.

But just as he wanted to follow the tracks, he saw dozens of red blinking lights in the distance. He assumed these men were dumb enough to walk into their own traps if they weren’t marked. That made it easier for him. But setting off mines or whatever they had planted there, really wasn’t anything he was looking forward to.

Slowly he navigated around the devices he had soon identified as being mines, like he had thought. It was quite easy to get around them and the darkness kept him concealed for long enough to actually reach what appeared to be a very run down area of various warehouses. However, there was only one with lit windows, so he made his way towards that one.

He even managed to get inside without being detected, but it took him a second too long to notice the infrared beams blocking access to the only lit path. The explosion that followed slammed him into a wall and he landed in a pile of cardboard boxes. He couldn’t care much as he was trying to get the ringing out of his ears and back to his feet before anyone showed up.

He dove for what appears to be some sort of wall, but instead set off another explosion by not paying attention where the boxes flew when he got up as quick as he did. The whole building shook, small pieces of concrete rained down on him.

This couldn’t mean anything good, but Rose was here, and he had to find her. Maybe he would be able to take out whoever was guarding the facility.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> omfg. It's continuing!  
> I'm sorry for the long delay, artschool is really time consuming and i am still trying to find some balance between freetime and projects.
> 
> So here have a quite long chapter and hopefully lots of fun with it!   
> As always i would be thrilled about some feedback on how you liked the chapter and what i could improve, thank you for still reading!

Meryl was toweling her hair dry when she stepped out of the bathroom, half expecting Raiden to sit somewhere or be asleep. She hadn’t expected him to not be present at all. For a moment she assumed he was still outside, but when she realized that wasn’t the case she took in a deep breath as to not throw a rage fit.

 “That little…“ she growled. Why had she had been so sure that he would not run off again, anyway?

With a deep sigh she called the older man, impatiently pacing around while waiting for him to pick up. Soon enough she realized he was ignoring the call completely. “Yeah you know full well I’d give you hell for running away again, don’t you?” she hissed at her phone. “But I’m not stupid, my friend.”

She wasn’t even sure why she was so upset, that man was old enough to look after himself. And still she felt the need to find him. Even if it was just to get John back to both of his parents. Maybe it had a personal reason. That image of him rushing past her and Johnny in outer haven was still very clear in her mind.

“I can’t believe this guy…” She hissed silently, grabbed the keys for the car she had rented and headed outside. It was in the middle of the night now, streets rather empty in this city.

When she climbed into the car and called Hal she kept shaking her head.

“Where is he?” She hissed into the phone the moment Hal had picked up.

“He?” the confused voice of a male asked.

“Raiden. You know where he is, don’t you?”

Nervous throat clearing could be heard. Meryl rolled her eyes. “Do you even realize what you did?”

“Raiden can take them on. It’s just five, from what I heard.“

“I’ve seen him fight. I know he can.” Meryl sighed. “But I told him to wait-“

A short period of silence followed before Hal replied to her. “You wouldn’t sit there waiting if Johnny had been captured, would you?”

Meryl opened her mouth to argue, but instead stayed silent. Of course Hal was right. And Johnny was stupid enough to let things like that actually happen. “Fine. But at least tell me where he is, so I can find him.”

“You shouldn’t-“

“Why shouldn’t I?” Meryl hissed at him.

“You’re- “

“I’m what? A woman?”

She heard Hal sigh. “That’s not what I wanted to say.”

“Then give me the location!” Meryl urged him on impatiently.

Hal was silent for a second too long before he nervously replied, “Half an hour out of town, seems to be an abandoned warehouse. The satellite picture wasn’t very great. I’ll send you the location.”

“Anything I need to know before I go there?”

“I am sure they don’t want anyone to go there, so there could be traps. Be careful.”

She didn’t bother to comment on that when she hung up. That guy hadn’t changed at all. Hal was still a nervous wreck in tight situations, even when he wasn’t really part of it.  Of course she had to be careful, there was more on the line than just her life. If anything went wrong there was a chance that Johnny and her had to take care of John for longer than just a few days. She wanted to avoid that at all costs.

 

 

Rose was still cowering under the table when she heard a third and fourth explosion. The shaking walls were enough to get her concerned about the building’s integrity. That was until she tried to grab the blanket off the chair. Pain shot up her shoulder and that was all she could think about for the next few minutes. She was frustrated at it, how was she supposed to keep on working on the data while being injured like that?

Had these men planned any of this at all? What good would it do to injure a hostage? And why her shoulder of all places? She had been lucky that it was just that. No vital parts were damaged, but that didn’t make the pain any better. If anything, it only calmed her racing thoughts. A fifth explosion could be heard, this time further away. Then gunshots and yelling. She figured while they were busy trying to take out whatever they were fighting, she could try to find a way to escape this room.

The door was made of glass, but throwing the chair through it could have alerted the men again. The windows had been nailed shut with wooden planks, there was no way to get out there without some sort of tool.

Still, now that the men seemed busy enough Rose climbed back onto the chair, feeling lightheaded and a little dizzy. The wound wasn’t bleeding much, but she shock from it certainly had its effect.

Looking back to the door she couldn’t see anyone and so she turned her attention towards the computer and the internet page she had opened before. She had already written a small message and was going to send it to Hal, when she heard one of the men walk down the hall. Thrown into slight panic she hastily deleted the message and pretended to have been searching what they wanted. When she looked back to the glass door, not particular curious about what they were doing, she thought her heart was going to stop for a moment. All color left her face, and a heavy weight settled in her stomach.

They were dragging a person into one of the rooms that were alongside the corridor, but that wasn’t what shocked Rose so much. The person was limp, unmoving. Obviously male, white blond hair, pale face. The blood looked a lot redder in the harsh neon lights of the corridor. And the men dragged him around like an object.

Rose involuntary covered her mouth with her hand and held her breath. It hadn’t taken a full second to recognize her husband. What had they done to him? Was he still alive? They wouldn’t have locked him up if he was dead, would they? She swallowed hard and turned back to the computer screen, knowing that panicking now could ruin any chance of survival either of them still had. Perhaps she could get away with pretending she was just shocked about the fact that there was a person at all. Still, she didn’t know if any of these men knew more about this. If they had looked into her data, there was a chance they had found Jack too.

The man from earlier unlocked the door and settled back down next to her. She had a hard time to hide that she was shaking, wanted nothing more but to run out of the room and make sure Jack was alright. How had he even found her? But all of that didn’t matter now.

“Seems like someone was trying to get you out of here.” The man told her.

Rose didn’t reply. She didn’t want him to notice that this was getting to her, but she knew she was failing.

“See, if you find what we need, we might let you go.”

“You won’t.” She told him, managed to hide her trembling voice for long enough to sound confident while she typed on the keyboard.

The man laughed. “You’re right. We won’t. You know that guy?” he nodded towards the door. “You seemed kinda surprised.”

“Never seen him before.” Rose was about to shrug, but decided against it. Anything to keep strain away from her shoulder. The lie felt so wrong, it made her sick. She had promised him to never lie to him again and now she denied that there was any connection at all. She wanted to strangle that small voice of conscience in her mind. She had no time to feel guilty about this and it was just to protect him.

“He seemed kinda desperate.” The man scoffed. “Took quite a bit of bullets to take him down.”

Rose resisted the urge to flinch and kept typing. Whatever she was going to do now, she had to think about it properly. Her best chances were to pretend she had no connection to Jack, and maybe, if he was still alive, get him out of there too. She felt tears wanting to fill her eyes but blinked them away.

“How are you going to get rid of me?” She asked then.

The man laughed at that. It was loud and made her neck hair stand up. “We were planning on shooting you in the head, but we’re pretty much out of bullets now. So we just lock you in and blow the building up. And if you survive that, you’ll starve. No one really comes here, and it’s way out of town.”

“Cruel.” She commented casually as if she was talking about the weather. “I assume I get one last request?”

The man crossed his arms and looked serious now. “You’re lucky I’m not as uptight as the other’s are. Sure, request something. As long as it isn’t to be released.”

Rose flashed him an emotionless smile. “Lock me up with that guy.”

“I doubt he’d be much company.”

Rose forced her mind to ignore his statement and didn’t react to it at all when she replied, “Not going to grant my wish?”

He chuckled and shrugged. “Whatever you want.”

“Who is this guy I have to find anyway?” She then asked, tried to distract herself from the fear for her husband.

“Why should I tell you that?” The man shot back.

Rose looked at him for a moment, his dark hair had gray edges, green eyes, looked rather young. He couldn’t have been older than thirty.

“I’m going to die anyway, might was well know what I am dying for.” She shrugged and instantly bit her lip at the pain in her shoulder.

The man chuckled. “Very well. You could say this man owes a large amount of money. He went into hiding.”

Rose only nodded. She wasn’t particularly interested in the details, but stalling him could have given someone the chance to actually get there. Maybe even enough time for Jack to recover, if he was better off than she feared.

“What is this man to you? Why does he owe so much money?”

“All I know is what I told you.” He shrugged. Rose noticed a faint twitch in his left eye. Had she just imagined it? Was he lying? Was it just random?

“You kidnapped me to get the money back?”

The man smirked. “We originally had different plans with you, but our _friend_ seems to have had enough fun with you. He was telling the strangest stories about how you jerked him off.”

Rose chose to not question that. Had they planned to rape her? Their _friend_ was obviously lying, but was it his fantasy, or was he protecting her?

She smirked at him and pulled up the page she had opened not much after she had first settled down there. “There’s the info on that guy.”

The man froze for a moment, then rested his elbows on his knees and leaned forward to look at the screen. “You played me, didn’t you? You had this open the whole time.”

She scoffed and stood, took the sip out of the coffee mug that was still in there after it had fallen down earlier. “I’m done here. You got your information.”

“How do I know this is legit?”

“You could call.” She shot back.

In an instant he was next to her, painfully gripped her hair and pulled her head back so she had to look at him. “I don’t like women who play me.” He hissed at her.

She glared back at him. “I don’t like men who use me.” She retorted, knew she had no chance should he get violent. Not with the injured shoulder.

He pushed her against the wall, gripped her damaged shirt and pulled at it, most likely to tear it apart. Rose almost laughed when he was unable to do so and his hand slipped off the fabric. It had paid off to spend a little more on decent shirts, but that piece of clothing was ruined now anyway.

Instead of trying again, he grabbed the belt loops of her pants but was stopped in the middle of trying to open the buttons by the sound of glass shattering not too far away. Rose inched away from the man when he let go of her. She barely noticed she was shaking when she grabbed the lamp from the desk and prepared herself to smash it over the man’s head.

 Rose could hear yells and panicked screams in the hallway. She had no idea what was going on, flinched when gunshots rang yet again.

The man moved closer to the door and Rose gripped the lamp tighter. The man seemed distracted enough and so she pulled the plug of the device, the room now only illuminated by the screen of the computer. She used the second of confusion to slam the lamp over the man’s head with all her strength, but to her utter disappointment it barely had any effect on him. He flinched and turned, then stared at her with pure anger on his face, fists ready to punch him.

She ducked away from his punch, held her breath when the glass door shattered behind the man. Things then happened too fast for her to notice. The man fell to the floor instantly and all Rose could see then was the man she hadn’t seen in four weeks. She stumbled, her legs shaking and not quite supporting her weight and soon enough she found herself sitting on the floor. She didn’t want to get up again, just wanted all of this to finally stop.

Her husband made a move towards her. Even in the dim light Rose could see all the blood staining his clothing. They seemed to have shot him in various places. She knew there was no immediate danger, but that wouldn’t stay like that for long.

Just when he reached for her, he was struck down by a crowbar and lost his balance, only to crash into the floor seconds later. Rose couldn’t suppress a frightened squeak, wanted to reach out to her husband when the other three men grabbed him and dragged him out of the room again.

Rose then barely realized that she had been dragged out of the room too and was now locked up in a smaller room, like many of those she had seen when she had walked down the hallway.  She stumbled; fell to the ground and needed too long to recover from the fall due to her injured shoulder.

She blinked against the lights, her vision swarmed by bright dots and blinking lights, a sound like a beehive in her head. When she fell to her side, she realized she was passing out, but couldn’t do anything against it.

Something shook her awake not much later, but there was no one next to her. She felt nauseous and dizzy, could barely move at all. When she moved her head and waited for the spinning to subside she could see her husband on the ground in the room on the other side, sprawled out like a ragdoll. Unmoving.

Weakly she clenched a fist and hit the door, the sound barely even reaching her down ears.

“Jack!” she hissed anyway, her voice silent and weak as she hopelessly waited for a reaction of him.

She doubted that he’d hear her even if he had been conscious. How badly was he injured? How the hell had they even captured him? Rose bit down on her trembling lip, tried hard to force the panic down.

Minutes passed until she was able to sit up again, still feeling weak and dizzy as she leaned against the door and smashed her fist into it. She wondered if the door or her fingers would break first, scoffed at the thought and stared through the glass to catch a glimpse of her husband. He still hadn’t moved a hair.

“Shit…” she whispered to herself and into the almost empty room. “Shit, this just can’t be true.” The neon lights on the ceiling were bright and uncomfortable and they certainly weren’t helping chasing the dizziness away.

She kept hitting her fist against the door. When she realized she couldn’t bring up the strength to get back to her feet, tears finally forced their way over her cheeks. She hadn’t seen him in four weeks, and this was how they were reunited. It was almost more painful than the fact that he wasn’t reacting to her at all or that they would most likely both die here.

“Get up!” she tried to yell but her voice was drowned in tears, too silent and weak. She had barely heard it herself.

Wasn’t it enough now? She had been on edge the whole time but was able to pull herself together, until now. It was over now and freedom was blocked by a glass door that could have been broken by something heavy. She just wanted it to stop.

From the corner of her eye she saw weak movement from the other room. It could have been imagination, but the hope she felt gave her the strength she needed to get back to her feet. Hastily she looked around. There was a shelf that looked heavy enough to break the door, yet when she stumbled over and tried to move it, she realized it was mounted to the wall. Panicked she ripped out whatever was stored in the shelf, one hand gripping it tightly so she wouldn’t love balance. The stacks of paper didn’t help her much and she just tossed them to the ground in search of something heavy. In a corner of the shelf she found a book, was about to toss it to the other stuff on the ground when she saw an empty cashbox made of metal.

She grabbed it, slammed it shut and tossed it against the door, almost hoped it would shatter the door and was slightly disappointed when it didn’t even make a dent in the door after it had bounced back and landed on the ground with a protesting clatter. There wasn’t so much as a scratch. Angrily she grabbed it again, this time bashed it repeatedly against the door.

She stopped when a tremor ran through the building and fear spiked through her. They were going to blow up this building after all. Her heart was racing now, the trembling so bad she could barely move anymore. Something heavy fell to the ground somewhere and Rose grabbed the box again. She could be scared later, now she had to get out of here.

Still, no matter how hard she slammed the box into the door, other than a few dents she couldn’t get anything done. She was kicking the door as hard as she could, knowing this wasn’t getting her anywhere either. A few times she had tried to get the shelf loose, but had no success with that either. Then, while trying that again, she suddenly heard glass shatter in the hallway.

For a second she froze, then turned to where the sound had come from. She had been so caught up in trying to break the door that she hadn’t noticed Jack getting up. He looked far from fine, but he was standing there and moved over to the door that kept her confined.

“Get away from the door!” he shouted at her, his voice strained and somehow unfamiliar.

Rose slowly inched away, covered her face when he threw himself against the door to break it. It took three tries before the glass shards rained to the ground. The few seconds that passed before he grabbed her arm, felt like eternity. It had been so long since she had last seen his face, heard his voice, seen him like this. For a few moments she wanted nothing more than to throw herself into his arms and forget about the situation.

 “Did you see any windows?” he asked her while looking frantically for an exit.

Rose could only shake her head when he took her hand and pulled her along. All windows she had seen had been hammered shut with wood. Smoke was drifting around them, making her cough and pull her shirt over her nose. It was getting significantly warmer too the closer they got to the hall.

Then when she saw the destruction, she felt sick. She had been sitting there just a few hours ago. Now the early morning sky was visible through the holes in the high roof. The building was on fire, smoke and rubble as far as she could see. They had really planned to blow her up here. But even though they had gotten out of the rooms, the chance to make it out of the building seemed so thin.

Rose’s legs almost gave in, the trembling so bad she could only stumble along. Jack stopped for a moment then, turned around to face her. His expression told her that he was going to tell her something she wouldn’t like to hear.

“We’re trapped…” he hissed, his eyes like ice in the bright light of the flames. “The windows I saw are all on the other side…”

She pointed back into the hallway. “B-Back there-“ she swallowed hard, suppressed a cough. The smoke made it hard to breathe. “There’s a room- The windows are blocked but-“ He grabbed her hand again, pulled her back to the corridor past all the rooms and back to the computer room that was now pitch black, without saying a single word.

He was swaying and trembling, his face unusually pale. She had seen the dark circles under his eyes in the dirt stained face. She could only imagine how he was feeling at that moment.

Jack let go of her when he darted for the nailed shut windows and kicked them in, destroying the wood that blocked them and pulled it away. He was furious, his bloodied face a mask of anger and frustration. Rose had no doubt that he was in pain too.

The sunlight almost blinded her when the window was finally open. She didn’t bother to think about where the other men went, only hoped that this time freedom would last. She almost fell when she moved to the window, the smoke now reaching this room as well. It was only a matter of time until every room was covered in smoke and flames.

“It’s a few feet. I’ll go first.” Jack told her and before she could protest, he had already jumped out the window. Exhaustedly she leaned out of the window, Stared down where her husband was standing. It was easily five meters to the ground but she was too exhausted and too riled up to care about that fact when she slowly and clumsily made her way out of the window and almost fell down into her husband’s arms.

He instantly wrapped his arms around her, held her tightly. Rose grimaced at the pain in her shoulder, had no strength left to actually hug him or say anything. They weren’t safe yet, that didn’t take a genius to tell. The men could still be around and she still had no idea where this place even was.

The fact that the sun was shining gave all of it a surreal feel.

When Jack slowly set her back down on the ground and carefully brushed her hair out of her face, Rose heard voices. Bullets whizzed past them and before she even had time to say anything, she was pulled away from where she was standing and soon found herself in what seemed to be a forest. Jack didn’t say anything, just held her hand and dragged her along over roots and puddles and various other things she didn’t want to see.

When she stumbled he slowed down for a second, stared at her with wide eyes as if in panic. She couldn’t connect that reaction with the situation. Was he scared? Overwhelmed with the situation? Was it something completely different? She was about to reach out to him when he turned to her.

“I’m sorry.” He whispered, an expression on his face that made her feel as if something had stabbed her. “I… I-“

She shook her head and gripped his arm, stumbled along when he continued to walk. She knew he wanted to tell her something, but first they had to get to safety. It was clear that he was struggling to move by now, even more than she was. He had been hit by bullets in various places, Rose didn’t even dare to count all the blood stains on his shirt and pants. A bullet missed her by a hair, hit him in the shoulder. She winced but he barely had any reaction to it.

“They’ll give up eventually… we just have to get far enough away.” His voice was silent, barely above a whisper. He ran a hand over his face to wipe away sweat and blood, turned to Rose for a second, maybe to tell her something, but instead of talking to her she only saw him slip off an edge that had been covered in leafs and branches. His eyes widened in surprise, Rose instinctively reached out to him, gripped his shirt and was pulled along by the weight of him. She yelped and squeezed her eyes shut, anticipating the impact.

The first thing she noticed was the loud splash as they hit the water below, then realization hit her. They had just fallen into a river or a lake, whatever it was. Seconds passed before she was able to resurface in the shoulder deep water, another few seconds before Jack stood next to her. The trembling she had seen the whole time was now a lot more visible. She was about to reach out to him when sparks sizzled around him for a short moment. Rose held her breath, both in shock and fear. Whatever this meant, it was nothing good.

“Jack-“ she whispered, unsure what to say. There was no doubt the men would find them now.

The injury in her shoulder was long forgotten, now her only thought was dedicated to get out of here with her husband. She reached out again, carefully and slightly afraid this time, but when her hand wrapped around his arm, nothing happened and so she pulled him along this time.

His movements were extremely slow now, but as long as he was moving, Rose was satisfied with just that. It wasn’t far to the other side, and it didn’t get any deeper. The forest continued there as well. It seemed to be the most logical solution to go there.

Minutes, that felt like hours, later Rose reached the other side of the lake, somehow managed to help her husband out of the water. She was freezing now, shivering  and just desperately hoping that they would find someone friendly soon. She was sick and tired of running and being afraid. And now Jack who had come to rescue her, had been injured even more than her.

“You okay?” She asked him silently when he gripped a branch to move forward and almost fell.

He didn’t reply instantly, a twitch ran through the body, then a synthesized voice spoke to her. _‘The Water damaged some systems.’_

Her eyes widened at the voice, remembered how much she hated that mock up of a voice. “Vital?”

_‘No. The bullets did that.’_

Rose froze for a second, bit her lip and took a deep breath, then gripped his arm again and pulled him along. “Where’s your cell phone?”

_‘Pocket’_

She reached for the phone in his pocket, was pleasantly surprised when the device lit up at the press of a button. This time she decided to call the police, but was stopped by her husband.

_‘Call Meryl.’_

Rose didn’t bother to question that and just did as told. The women on the other end didn’t even let it ring twice before she picked up.

“That’s bout time, Raiden!” Meryl yelled at her and Rose wanted to yell back, but the words got caught in her throat when she saw her husband crumple to the ground as if someone had shut off all his systems.

“Jack!” she hissed, followed his movement, Meryl already forgotten.


End file.
